
Qassj ^. 

Book-Ll^2:L 



^71 



EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 

VOLUME I 

THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 

VOLUME I 

THE 

ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



BY 

EDWARD L. THORNDIKE 

PROFESSOR or EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN TEACHERS COLLEGE 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



PUBLISHED BY 

^eattiita eToIIece, €oluxnbia C^nibersits 

NEW YORK 

1921 






Copyright 1913, By 
EDWARD L. THORNDIKE 



^3 



X 



THE MA80N PRINTINC CORPORATISM 
STRACI/SK AND NSW YORK 



TO THE MEMORY 

OF 
WILLIAM JAMES 



PREFACE 

This volume, which describes man's original mental equip- 
ment — the inherited foundations of intellect, morals and skill, — 
is the first of three, which, together, give the main facts of 
educational psychology. The second volume, on The Psychol- 
ogy of Learning, treats of the laws of learning in general, the 
improvement of mental functions by practice and their deterior- 
ation by fatigue. The third volume, on Individual Differences 
and Their Causes, treats of the variations of individual men 
around the general type characteristic of man as a species, and of 
the influence o-f sex, race, immediate ancestry, maturity and train- 
ing in producing these variations. This third volume was written 
first, appearing in 1903 under the general title. Educational 
Psychology. 

A systematic account of present knowledge of the dynamics 
of human nature and behavior is much needed for students of 
education and other forms of human control. These volumes 
represent a selection from, and organization of, recent work in 
experimental, statistical and comparative psychology, such as 
will, I hope, economize effort and diminish the chances of error 
for such students. 

The reader to whom these volumes bring any new insight into 
human nature, power in the quantitative treatment of mental facts, 
or interest in the rich details of concrete human nature, will be- 
come a sharer in my debt to my teachers, William James and 
James McKeen Cattell, and to that intrepid devotee to concrete 
human nature, Stanley Hall, whose doctrines I often attack, but 
whose genius I always admire. 

Parts of Chapters I, II, VII, IX, X and KVII of this volume 
constituted four lectures given at Union College in March, 191 3, 
under the provisions of the Ichabod Spencer Foundation. 

Teachers College, Columbia XJ^niversity, 
March, 1913 
yii 



CONTENTS 

Chapteh Pagb 

I. Introduction i 

Original z'ersus Learned Tendencies 
The Problems of Original Nature 

II. General Characteristics OF Original Tendencies 5 
Names for Original Tendencies 
The Components of an Original Tendency 
The Action of Original Tendencies 
Stages in the Description of Human Nature 

III Inventories OF the Original Nature OF Man. .. . 16 

James' Inventory 

Indefiniteness in Descriptions of Original Ten- 
dencies 

Criteria of the Probsble Ilnlearnedness of a Ten- 
dency 

IV. Sources of Information 27 

The Discovery of Original Tendencies by Svste- 

matic Observation of Children 
The Discovery of Original Tendencies by a Cen- 
sus of Opinions 
Other Sources 
The Insecurity of Present Information 

V. Responses of Sensitivity. Attention ^and Gross 

Bodily Control 43 

Sensory Capacities 
Original Attentiveness 
Gross Bodily Control 

VI. Food Getting, Protective Responses, and Anger. . 50 
Food (letting 



IX 



X CONTENTS 

Chaptkr Page 

Habitation 
Fear 
Fighting 
Anger 

VII. Responses to the Behavior of Other Human 

Beings 8i 

Motherly Behavior 

Responses to the Presence, Approval and Scorn 

of Men 
Mastering and Submissive Behavior 
Other Social Instincts 

VIII. Responses to the Bepiavior of Other Human 

Beings : Imitation io8 

General Imitativeness 

The Imitation of Particular Forms of Behavior 

IX. Original Satisfiers and Annoyers 123 

The Original Nature of Wants, Interests and 

Motives 
The Principles of Readiness 
The Explanation of 'Multiple Response' or 'Varied 

Reaction' 

X. Tendencies to Minor Bodily Movements and 

Cerebral Connections 135 

Vocalization, Visual Exploration and Manipula- 
tion 
Other Possible Specializations 
Curiosity and Mental Control 
Play 
'Random' Movements 

XI. The Emotions and Their Expression 150 

Difficulties in Identifying and Studying Emo- 
tional States 
McDougall's Inventory of Original Tendencies 
to Emotional States 



CONTENTS Xi 

Chapter r^ee 

The Relation of Emotions to the Movements 

which "Express" Them 
The Original Bonds of the Expressive Movements 

XII. Consciousness, Learning and Remembering 170 

Original Tendencies to Consciousness 

The Capacity to Learn 

Limitations to Modifiability 

The Supposed Formation of Connections by 

"Faculties" 
The Supposed Formation of Connections by the 

Perception of Their Action in Another 
The Supposed Formation of Connections by the 

Power of an Idea to Produce the Act which 

it Represents 
Attempted Explanations of Learning by the Laws ' 

of Exercise Alone 
Remembering 

XIIL Summary, Criticism and Classification 195 

The Action of Fragments and Combinations of 

Original Tendencies 
The Variability of Men in Original Tendencies 
The Modifiability of Original Tendencies 
A Summary of Man's Original Nature 
Criticisms 
The Classification of Original Tendencies 

XIV. The Anatomy and Physiology of Original Ten- 
dencies 209 

The Structure of the Neurones 

The Arrangement of the Neurones 

Sensitivity and Conductivity 

The Physiology of the Capacity to Learn and of 

Readiness 
The Physiology of Delay and Transitoriness in 

Original Tendencies 

XV. The Source of Original Tendencies 230 

The Hypothesis of the Transmission of Acquired 
Traits 



Xll CONTENTS 

Chaptbk Pace 

Tlie Selection of 'Chance' Variations in the Germ 

Plasm 
The Continuity of Original Tendencies 
The Extent of Selection for Intellectual and 

Moral Superiority 

XVI. The Order and Dates of Appearance and Dis- 

appearance OF Original Tendencies. 245 

The Recapitulation Theory 

The Utility Theory 

The Evidence 

The Dates of Appearance of Particular Ten- 
dencies 

The Gradual Waxing of Delayed Instincts and 
Capacities 

The Probable Frequency of Transitoriness in 
Original Tendencies 

XVII. The Value and Use of Original Tendencies. . . . 270 

The Doctrine of Nature's Infallibility 

The Doctrine of Catharsis 

Defects in Man's Original Nature 

The Use of Original Tendencies in Detail 

Original Tendencies as Ends : Emulation in the 

Case of School 'Marks' 
Original Tendencies as Means : Suggestion in 

Education 
Original versus 'Natural' Tendencies 
The Importance of the Original Satisfiers and 

Annoyers 
The True Significance of Plasticity 
Which Instincts are of Most Worth 
Original Nature the Ultimate Source of All 

Values 

Bibliography of References Made in the Text. . : 313 

Index 320 



The Original Nature of Man 

chapter i 
Introduction 

The arts and sciences sen^e human welfare by helping 
man to change the world, including man himself, for the better. 
The word education refers especially to those elements of sci- 
ence and art which are concerned with changes in man himself. 
Wisdom and economy in improving man's wants and in making 
him better able to satisfy them depend upon knowledge — first, 
of what his nature is, apart from education, and second, of 
the laws which govern changes in it. It is the province of 
educational psychology to give such knowledge of the original 
nature of man and of the laws of modifiability or learning, in 
the case of intellect, character and skill, 

A man's nature and the changes that tal<:e place in it may 
be described in terms of the responses — of thought, feeling, 
action and attitude — which he makes, and of the bonds by 
which these are connected with the situations which life offers. 
Any fact of intellect, character or skill means a tendency to 
respond in a certain way to a certain situation — involves a 
situation or state of affairs influencing the man, a response or 
state of affairs in the man, and a connection or bond whereby 
the latter is the result of the former. 

ORIGINAL versus LEARNED TENDENCIES 

Any man possesses at the very start of his life — that is, at 
the moment when the ovum and spermatozoon which are to 
produce him have united — numerous well-defined tendencies 
I I 



2 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

to future behavior.* Between the situations which he will 
meet and the responses which he will make to them, pre-formed 
bonds exist. It is already determined by the constitution of 
these two germs, that under certain circumstances he wall see 
and hear and feel and act in certain ways. His intellect and 
morals, as well as his bodily organs and movements, are in part 
the consequence of the nature of the embryo in the first moment 
of its life. What a man is and does throughout life is a result 
of whatever constitution he has at the start and of all the forces 
that act upon it before and after birth. I shall use the term 
'original nature' for the former and 'environment' for the 
latter. His original nature is thus a name for the nature of 
the combined germ-cells from which he springs, and his en- 
vironment is a name for the rest of the universe, so far as it 
may, directly or indirectly, influence him. 

In one sense nothing in human nature is due exclusively to 
either one of these factors. Those tendencies most dependent 
on the original nature of the organism require certain coopera- 
tion on the part of the environment ; and those most dependent 
on outside circumstances still require some cooperation 
on the part of the organism. Even the first splitting of 
the fertilized ovum into two cells occurs only when adequate 
stimuli, for instance of temperature, act ab extra; and even the 
death of the organism by starvation occurs only, its date at 
least, in accord with certain responses from within. 

But in another sense the most fundamental question for 
human education asks precisely that we assign separate shares 
in the causation of human behavior to man's original nature 
on the one hand and his environment or nurture on the other. 



♦Since the term, behavior, has acquired certain technical meanings in its 
use by psychologists, and since it will be frequently used in this book, the 
meaning which will be attached to it here should perhaps be stated. I use 
it to refer to those activities of thought, feeling, and conduct in the broadest 
sense which an animal — here, man — exhibits, which are omitted from dis- 
cussion by the physics, chemistry and ordinary physiology of today, and 
which are referred by popular usage to intellect, character, skill and tem- 
perament. Behavior, then, is not contrasted with, but inclusive of, conscious 
life. 



INTRODUCTION 3 

In this sense we neglect, or take for granted, the cooperating 
action of one of the two divisions in order to think more success- 
fully and conveniently of the action of the other. Thus, we 
say that man is by his original nature able to see, but that what 
he sees depends upon the environment he meets ; or that original 
nature makes him respond to certain objects by fears, which 
environmental training weakens; or that a child instinctively 
conveys food to his mouth with the naked hand, but by habit 
comes to use a spoon as well ; or that native curiosity develops, 
by proper training, into interests in the arts and sciences. 

The custom of thus abstracting out the original nature of 
man in independence of any and all influences upon it is so 
general and so useful that it is best to follow it throughout, 
remembering, however, that from the first moments after the 
fertilization of the ovum, a human individual is always an 
acquired nature, — that in the most original behavior discover- 
able, such as breathing or suckling, some outside conditions 
are involved, — and that in tlie most exclusively acquired or 
learned arts, such as knowledge of the square root of 256, some 
element of original capacity has a share. 

THE PROBLEMS OF ORIGINAL NATURE 

Elementary psychology acquaints us with the fact that men 
are, apart from education, equipped with tendencies to feel and 
act in certain ways in certain circumstances — that the response 
to be made to a situation may be determined by man's inborn 
organization. It is, in fact, a general law that, other things 
being equal, the response to any situation will be that which 
is by original nature connected with that situation, or with 
some situation like it. Any neurone will, when stimulated, 
transmit the stimulus, other things being equal, to the neurone 
with which it is by inborn organization most closely connected. 
The basis of intellect and character is tliis fund of unlearned 
tendencies, this original arrangement of the neurones in the 
brain. 

The original connections may develop at various dates and 



4 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

may exist for only limited times; their waxing and waning- 
may be sudden or gradual. They are the starting point for 
all education or other human control. The aim of education 
is to perpetuate some of them, to eliminate some, and to modify 
or redirect others. They are perpetuated by providing the 
stimuli adequate to arouse them and give them exercise, and 
by associating satisfaction with their action. They are elim- 
inated by withholding these stimuli so that they abort through 
disuse, or by associating discomfort with their action. They 
are redirected by substituting, in the situation-connection-re- 
sponse series, another response instead of the undesirable 
original one; or by attaching the response to another situation 
in connection with which it works less or no harm, or even 
positive good. 

It is a first principle of education to utilize any individual's 
original nature as a means to changing him for the better — 
to produce in him the information, habits, powers, interests 
and ideals which are desirable. 

The behavior of man in the family, in business, in the 
state, in religion and in every other affair of life is rooted in 
his unlearned, original equipment of instincts and capacities. 
All schemes of improving human life must take account of 
man's original nature, most of all when their aim is to reverse 
or counteract it. 

A study of the original nature of man as a species and of 
the original natures of individual men is therefore the primary 
task of human psychology. This volume is concerned with 
only the former task. The main topics of such a study are : 

1. The description and classification of original tendencies, 

2. Their anatomy and physiology, 

3. Their source or origin, 

4. The order and dates of their appearance and disap- 
pearance, and 

c;. Their control in the service of human ideals. 



chapter ii 
General Characteristics of Original Tendencies 

NAMES for original TENDENCIES 

Three terms, reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities, di- 
vide the work of naming these unlearned tendencies. When 
the tendency concerns a very definite and uniform response to 
a very simple sensory situation, and when the connection be- 
tween the situation and the response is very hard to modify 
and is also very strong so that it is almost inevitable, the con- 
nection or response to which it leads is called a reflex.. Thus 
the knee-jerk is a very definite and uniform response to the 
simple sense-stimulus of sudden hard pressure against a cer- 
tain spot. It is hard to lessen, to increase, or otherwise control 
the movement, and, given the situation, the response almost 
always comes. When the response is more indefinite, the 
situation more complex, and the connection more modifiable, 
instinct becomes the customary term. Thus one's misery at 
being scorned is too indefinite a response to too complex a sit- 
uation and is too easily modifiable to be called a reflex. When 
the tendency is to an extremely indefinite response or set of re- 
sponses to a very complex situation, and when the connection's 
final degree of strength is commonly due to very large con- 
tributions from training, it has seemed more appropriate to 
replace reflex and instinct by some term like capacity, or ten- 
dency, or potentiality. Thus an original tendency to respond 
to the circumstances of school education by achievement in 
learning the arts and sciences is called the capacity for scholar- 
ship. 

There is, of course, no gap between reflexes and instincts, 
or between instincts and the still less easily describable original 
tendencies. The fact is that original tendencies range with re- 
spect to the nature of the responses from such as are single, 

5 



O THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

simple, definite, uniform within the individual and only slightly 
variable amongst individuals, to responses that are highly com- 
pound, complex, vague, and variable within one individual's 
life and amongst individuals. They range with respect to the 
nature of the situation from simple facts like temperature, oxy- 
gen or humidity, to very complex facts like 'meeting suddenly 
and unexpectedly a large animal when in the dark without 
human companions,' and include extra-bodily, bodily, and what 
would be commonly called purely mental, situations. They 
range with respect to the bond or connection from slight modifi- 
ability to great modifiability, and from very close likeness 
amongst individuals to fairly wide variability. 

Much labor has been spent in trying to make hard and fast 
distinctions between reflexes and instincts and between instincts 
and these vaguer predispositions which are here called capac- 
ities. It is more useful and more scientific to avoid such dis- 
tinctions in thought, since in fact there is a continuous grada- 
tion. 

THE COMPONENTS OF AN ORIGINAL TENDENCY 

A typical reflex, or instinct, or capacity, as a whole, includes 
the ability to be sensitive to a certain situation, the ability to 
make a certain response, and the existence of a bond or con- 
nection whereby that response is made to that situation. For 
instance, the young chick is sensitive to the absence of other 
members of his species, is able to peep, and is so organized that 
the absence of other members of the species makes him peep. 
But the tendency to be sensitive to a certain situation may exist 
without the existence of a connection therewith of any further 
exclusive response, and the tendency to make a certain response 
may exist without the existence of a connection limiting that 
response exclusively to any single situation. The three-year- 
old child is by inborn nature markedly sensitive to the presence 
and acts of other human beings, but the exact nature of his 
response varies. The original tendency to cry is very strong, 
but there is no one situation to which it is exclusively bound. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 7 

Original nature seems to decide that the individual will 
respond somehow to certain situations more often than it 
decides just what he will do, and to decide that he will make 
certain responses more often than it decides just when he will 
make them. So, for convenience in thinking- about man's un- 
learned equipment, this appearance of multiple response to one 
same situation and multiple causation of one same response 
may be taken roughly as the fact. 

It must not, however, be taken to mean that the result of an 
action set up in the sensory neurones by a situation is essen- 
tially unpredictable — that, for instance, exactly the same neur- 
one-action (paralleling, let us say, the sight of a dog by a 
certain two-year-old child) may lead, in the two-year-old, now 
to the act of crying, at another time to shy retreat, at another 
to effusive joy, and at still another to curious examination of 
the newcomer, all regardless of any modification by experience. 
On the contrary, in the same organism the same neurone-action 
will always produce the same result — in the same individual 
the really same situation will always produce the same response. 
^ The apparent existence of an original sensitivity unconnected 
with any one particular response, so that apparently the same 
cause produces different results, is to be explained in one of 
two ways. First, the apparently same situations may really 
be different. Thus, the sight of a dog to an infant in its 
mother's arms is not the same situation as the sight of a dog to 
an infant alone on the doorstep. Being held in its mother's 
arms is a part of the situation that may account for the response 
of mild curiosity in the former case and fear in the latter. 
Second, if the situations are really identical, the apparently 
same organism really differs. Thus a dog seen by a child, 
healthy, rested and calm, may lead to only curiosity, whereas, 
if seen by the same child, fll, fatigued, and nervously irritable, 
it may lead to fear. The organism may differ by being differ- 
ently disposed in its sensory apparatus, in its associative or 
connecting apparatus, in its motor neurones, in its muscular 
condition, or in other organs concerned in the response. These 



8 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

predispositions may come through conditions of nutrition, poi- 
soning, fatigue, cooperative stimulation, etc., etc.* .^ 

Similarly, the really same response is never made to differ- ^ 
ent situations by the same organism. When the same response j 
seems to be made to different situations, closer inspection will 
show that the responses do differ; or that the situations were, 
in respect to the element that determined the response, identical ; 
or that the organism is itself different. Thus, though 'a ball 
seen,' *a tin soldier seen,' and 'a rattle seen' alike provoke 
'reaching for,' the total responses do differ, the central nervous 
system being provoked to three different responses manifested 
as three different sense-impressions — of a ball, of a tin soldier, 
and of a rattle. Thus, if 'ball grasped,' 'tin soldier grasped,' 
and 'rattle grasped' alike provoke 'throwing,' it is because 
only one particular component, common to the three situations, 
is effective in determining the act. Thus, if a child now weeps 
whenever spoken to, whereas before he wept only when hurt or 
scolded, it is because he is now exhausted, excited, or otherwise 
changed. 

The original connections between situation and response are 
never due to chance in its true sense, but there are many minor 
cooperating forces by which a current of conduction in the 
same sensory neurones or receptors may. on different occasions, 
Biverge to produce different results in behavior, and by which 
very different sensory stimulations may converge to a substan- 
tially common consequence. 

One may use several useful abstract schemes by which to 
think of man's original equipment of reflexes, instincts and 
capacities. Perhaps the most convenient is a series of S-R con- 
nections of three types. Some are of the type — Si leads to Ri, 
its peculiar sequent ; some are of the type — Si leads to Ri or R2 
or R3 or R4 or R5 etc., according to very minor casual contribu-" 
tory causes ; some are of the type — Si leads to R+i"i, S2 leads to 



*Their most potent causes are the effects of previous experience, but these 
do not concern the present inquiry, since all effects of previous experience are, 
of course, to be rigorously excluded from a description of original nature. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 



R+Tz, S3 leads to R+fa etc., where n, Vz and rg are minor 
results. 

Graphically this scheme is represented by Figs, i, 2 and 3. 

F>G. I. S, _R, 



,. -V-- — — — ^— ^— — - ^» 



5»- 






Fig. 3. 



^^ 


r 


"*^^ 1 


' ''••^ 


.■"A." 


r. 



Besides such a system of tendencies deciding which response 
any given situation will produce, there are certain tendencies 
that decide the status of features common to all situation-re- 
sponse connections. There is, for example, in man an original 
tendency whereby any connection once made tends, other things 
being equal, to persist. There is also a tendency whereby any 
connection or response may or may not be in readiness to be 
made — may be excited to action easily or with difficulty. 
These tendencies toward the presence or absence of a certain 
feature in all connections or responses will be examined by 
themselves in due time. 

THE ACTION OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 

We can imagine a man's life so arranged that one after 
another original tendency should be called into play, each by 
itself. Let him be in a certain status, and let, successively, 
the light grow five times as intense, snuff be blown up his nos- 
trils, a dear friend approach, and the earth quake, without 



lO THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

in any case any other changes whatever either in the surround- 
ings or in his internal status. Then the pupils of his eyes 
would contract, he would sneeze, he would smile, and he would 
start. 

The original tendencies of man, however, rarely act one at 
a time in isolation one from another. Life apart from learning 
would not be a simple serial arrangement, over and over, of a 
hundred or so situations, each a dynamic unit : and of a hundred? 
or so responses, fitted to these situations by a one-to-one cor- 
respondence. On the contrary, they cooperate in multitudinous 
combinations. Their combination may be apparent in behavior, 
as when the tendencies to look at a bright moving object, to 
reach for a small object passing a foot away, and to smile at a 
smiling familiar face combine to make a baby smilingly fixate 
and reach for the watch which his father swings. Or the com- 
bination may take place unobserved in the nervous system, as 
when a large animal suddenly approaching a solitary child 
makes him run and hide, thougli the child in question would 
neither run nor hide at solitude, at the presence of the animal, 
or at the sudden approach of objects in general. 

It is also the case that any given situation does not act 
absolutely as a unit, producing either one total response or none 
at all. Its effect is the total effect of its elements, of which 
now one, now another may predominate in determining re- 
sponse, according to cooperating forces without and within the 
man. The action of the situations which move man's original 
nature is not that of some thousands of keys each of which 
unlocks one door and does nothing else whatever. Any situa- 
tion is a complex, producing a complex effect; and so, if 
attendant circumstances vary, a variable effect. In any case 
it does, so to speak, what it can. 

Ultimately, indeed, every fact in htmian life is a case of the 
co-action of all the universe except the man in question, and 
the condition of* the man in question at that instant. In taking 
anything short of all the universe save him and calling it the 
situation, we are abstracting — ^are replacing the total effective 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS II 

situation by some element of it. Also, in taking anything 
short of the rich entirety of the man at that instant as the organ- 
ism, we are abstracting — are replacing the total effective coni- 
ditions of the response by some of their main features. Such 
abstraction is, of course, the procedure of common sense and 
of science. Everywhere there is abundant justification for 
building up an abstract scheme of the responses which situa- 
tions a, b, c, singly evoke, thoug'h in fact they never act singly ; 
or of the bonds between situation d and a total set of responses, 
though in fact the various component elements of d are never 
present in just the same proportions so that the very existence 
of d/ as a thing by itself is a myth. 

STAGES IN THE DESCRIPTION OF HUMAN NATURE 

The history of modern explanations of human intellect, 
character and skill shows three notable stages. In the first, cer- 
tain mythical potencies were postulated which, when aroused to 
action by the events of a man's life, produced his thoughts and 
acts. These potencies were 'instinct,' which could do almost 
anything in a pinch, the 'will,' and the 'faculties' — memory, at- 
tention, reasoning and the like. The actual information about 
human nature carried by these explanations was, as in the 
current uses of 'instinct of preservation' or 'capacity for self- 
expression,' that man was able to attain certain results in living. 
To say that he had the faculty or capacity of memory said that 
his present behavior was in one way or another influenced by his 
past experiences. To say that he had the power of reason was 
to say that he managed by thought to get along with conditions 
which would baffle a stone, tree, rabbit, or himself if he had not 
thought. Science of this sort could prophesy very little of the 
behavior of any given man in any given situation. 

In the second stage, behavior is defined in terms of more 
or less clearly described states of affairs to which man responds 
by more or less clearly described thoughts, movements, emotions 
or other responses. 'Instinct' gives way to 'instincts' — each 
referring to a bond between some situation and some response. 



12 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

In place of referring the influence of the past on the present to 
a ubiquitous demon called memory who alternately absorbs 
and excretes facts, men study the formation of particular 
associations or bonds, the conditions of their permanence and 
later effectiveness. Reasoning becomes a convenient name for 
the cases of behavior where some part or element in the situa- 
tion is predominant in determining the response, and where 
selection takes place amongst plans in view of ideas about 
their value for some end. We thus seek, in this second stage 
of thought, not a potency that vaguely produces large groups 
of consequences, but bonds that unite particular responses or- 
reactions to particular situations or stimuli. Science of this 
sort leads to many successful prophecies of what a man will 
think or do in a given case, but these prophecies are crude and 
subject to variability and qualification. 

In the third stage, behavior will be defined in terms of 
events in the world which any impartial observer can identify 
and, with proper facilities, verify. Each situation will be stated 
as just this state of affairs in nature; the response will be 
stated as just this event in the man ; and the bond will be stated 
as just this set of habits or just that arrangement and condition 
of the man's neurones by which the event in the man is brought 
to pass when that state of affairs is present in nature. Science 
of this sort, by giving perfect identifiability and fuller knoAvl- 
edge, leads to completer and finer prophecy and control of 
human nature. 

The descriptions of certain tendencies to behavior — for 
example, that of paramecium in response to certain chemicals, 
that of the dog in response to a drop of acid on certain spots of 
his skin, and that of man in response to a tap on a certain spot 
on the knee — are advancing from tlie second to the third 
stage. The descriptions of the instincts of fear, anger, and the 
like are advancing from the first to the second stage. But 
scores of such teiTns as musical ability, mathematical ability, 
technical skill, scholarship, artistic temperament, piety, quar- 
relsomeness, conventionality, cooperativeness, the instinct of 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 13 

self-pres€rvation, the social instinct, the gambling instinct, the 
play instinct, the instinct for justice, and the like .witness to 
the great number of human tendencies whose descriptions are 
still of the pattern of the first stage — ^mere statements that some- 
how or other a certain result is attained. 

Instincts as mythical potencies are, to say the least, not rigor- 
ously excluded by even two very recent and in many ways ad- 
mirable discussions — one, of the relation of instinct to intelli- 
gence; the other, of the significance of instincts for a philosophy 
of education. The eminent psychologists who discussed 'In- 
stinct and Intelligence' in the British Journal of Psychology- 
two years ago ['lo, vol. 3, pp. 209-266] again and again speak 
of instinct as if it were something like a heart or a thyroid 
gland or a 'memory' or an 'imagination,' which did this and 
that for a man. Henderson seems deliberately to advocate 
remaining in this first stage of thought in the case of unlearned 
tendencies. He says : — 

"The instincts are the functions of the organism considered 
from the point of view of the needs that they supply. Most 
lists of instincts are selected according to this conception, as 
the feeding instinct, the instinct of fear, of sociability, of 
acquisitiveness, of curiosity. On the other hand, the instinctive 
act is a complex of movements that constitutes an hereditarily 
preferred method of carrying out one or many instincts. Cry- 
ing, for example, is an instinctive act, and it may be resorted 
to as a means of satisfying the instinct of hunger, that of fear, 
that of sociability, and, indeed, almost any instinct that appears 
during the period when this type of activity prevails. Just as 
one instinctive act may be utilized by many instincts, so one 
instinct may function by means of a variety of types of in- 
stinctive or habitual activity. Thus the instinct of fear may 
lead to a resort to the instinctive acts of crouching, lying still, 
or hiding, or that of flight, or in extreme cases, perhaps, that 
of desperate fighting." ['10, p. 65] 

Next to the separation of what is original from what is 
learned, the main task of a description of the original nature of 
man is to progress from the first to the second of these stages.* 

*Progress irom the second to the third stage will depend upon researches 
yet to be made. If the inventory and description of the original intellect 



14 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

For it has remained a common practice to describe an 
original tendency only by its results even when, by enough 
attention to facts, the situation and the response could have 
been at least roughly defined. This is unfortunate. It is no 
more necessary, and is much less accurate, to describe man 
loosely as possessed of an 'instinct of self-preservation' than it is 
to describe oxygen as possessed of an 'instinct of rust 
production.' 

The real facts meant, in this and in all cases, are a multitude 
of more or less specialized responses to certain actual situations, 
— in this sample case, drawing back from a missile or blow, 
running from this, striking back at that, swallowing what 
tastes sweet, spitting out what tastes very bitter, going to 
sleep after long exertion, waking up after long sleep, picking 
up the small object seen, putting in one's mouth the object 
picked up, etc., etc. The instinct is not a response to, 'Pre- 
serve self or destroy self?' but to particular material objects 
and living animals or plants. Its moving impulse is not 'to 
preserve self — to stay alive' but some such concrete feeling as 
'get rid of this hunger — to feel comfortably full again' or 'to 
get away from that horrid beast.' In the case of the instinct 
proper, unmodified by experience, the moving impulse is not a 
notion of end or aim at all. For, originally, the situation it- 
self provokes the response irrespective of any thoughts of the 
consequences. Even sophisticated adults eat oftenest because 
they arc hungry or see or smell food, not. because they zvill be 
full. 

The name is especially misleading because the same instincts 
which usually result in preservation may result in death. The 
child's struggles against the operating surgeon or the tasting 
of lye, corrosive sublimate and the like along with spools and 
candy, are samples of the thousands of such possibilities. 

and character of man as a species to be given in this volume were to be 
confined to perfectly identifiable and demonstrable bonds between perfectly 
identified situations and responses, hardly a word could be said about one out 
of ten of the instincts and capacities with which education, politics, business 
and philanthropy are chiefly concerned. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 15 

There is no unlearned tendency to respond to 'life vs. death,' 
and probably there is none which inevitably, under every set of 
conditions, does result in life rather than in death. Indeed, 
only after the tendency is defined in terms of an identifiable 
response to an identifiable situation can one profitably inquire 
whether it is original or acquired, or how far it is original and 
how far acquired. 

If one insists resolutely on replacing a list of instincts as 
magic potencies which produce certain results, by a statement of 
even roughly definable bonds between actual situations and 
actual thoughts, feelings and acts, it becomes necessary to part 
company with the stock descriptions of instincts. It will be a 
great advantage if thought about the life of man can be ad- 
vanced to a level of description which will exclude teleological 
lists having as their themes such mythical potencies as the 
'instinct of self-preservation,' which makes you stay alive — 
the 'social instinct,' which makes you construct a society, — 
the 'parental instinct,' which makes you treat your own flesh 
and blood so as to favor them in all ways, — ^the 'religious in- 
stinct,' which makes you believe in a world of spirits, — 'con- 
structiveness,' which makes you build up all sorts of edifices, 
— 'destructiveness,' which makes you tear all sorts of edifices 
down, — or 'fear,' which makes you avoid danger. To secure 
this advantage for students of education is one main purpose 
of the next nine chapters. 



chapter iii 
Inventories of the Original Nature of Man 

As a first step toward a reasonable estimate of man's orig- 
inal equipment, we may consider the summary of the special 
human insimcts which James ['93*] reported as the combined 
result of the work of previous writers (notably, W. Preyer, 
['81] and G. H. Schneider ['80, '82]) and of his own 
observations. 

For convenience I repeat the list itself, where possible in 
James' own words, but for the detailed descriptions of each 
tendency the reader is referred to Chapter XXIV of James' 
Principles of Psychology.'^ 

James first quotes samples of the reflexes listed by Preyer,§ 
such as crying, sneezing, snuffling, snoring, coughing, sighing, 
sobbing, gagging, vomiting, hiccuping, starting, moving the 
limb in response to its being tickled, touched or blown upon, 
spreading the toes in response to being touched, tickled or 
stroked on the sole of the foot, extending and raising the arms 
at any sudden sensory stimulus, or the quick pulsation of the 
eyelid. Then follows his list and descriptions of the more com- 
plex original tendencies. Where possible I have summarized 
each description in one phrase for the situation (printed at the 
left of the page) and one for the response (printed at the 
right.) Where neither is described, I put (in the centre of the 

*First published, however, in a series of articles in 1887. 

tit should be noted that James does not pretend that this list is exhaus- 
tive or that his descriptions are precise, his interest being in demonstrating 
the vagueness, modifiability and wide range of human instincts, rather than 
in full enumeration or exact identification of the situations and responses 
concerned. It is, at all events, one of the best single lists available, and its- 
descriptions are much above the average in accuracy. 

§ See The Senses and the Will, by W. Preyer (Eng. trans.), Chap. X. 

16 



INVENTORIES OF ORIGINAL NATURE I7 

line and capitalized) the word or phrase used by James to 
describe the instinct as a whole. 

James' Inventory 

Sucking 
an object placed in the 

mouth , , .biting 

Chewing 
Grinding the teeth 

sugar licking 

a sweet taste a characteristic grimace 

a bitter taste a characteristic grimace 

Spitting out 
an object which touches 

the fingers or toes , . clasping 

an object seen at a dis- 
tance attempts to grasp it 

an object seen at a dis- 
tance pointing at it 

an object seen at a dis- 
tance -. making a peculiar sound 

expressive of desire 

an object grasped carrying it to the mouth 

bodily discomfort crying 

hunger crying 

pain crying 

being noticed smiling 

being fondled smiling 

being smiled at . smiling 

an object attended to protruding the lips 

Turning the head aside, frowning, bending back the body, and 

hokliiig the breath 

(these last three accompanying the first mentioned) 

Holding head erect 

Sitting up 

Standing 

Creeping 

Walking 

Climbing 

Cooing and gurgling 
2 



l8 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

hearing a sound imitating the sound 

seeing a gesture imitating a gesture 

Emulation or rivalry 
Pugnacity 

Anger 
Resentment 

the sight of suffering or 

danger to others interest and acts of 

relief 
"all living beasts, great 

and small toward 

which a contrary habit 

has not been found — 

all human beings in 

whom we perceive a 

certain intent toward 

us, and a large num- 
ber of human beings 

who offend us per- 
emptorily, either by 

their look, or gait, or 

by some circumstance 

in their lives which 

we dislike" hunting 

certain noises fear 

strange men fear 

strange animals fear 

certain kinds of vermin fear 

solitude (during infancy) fear 

black things fear 

dark places fear 

holes and corners fear 

high places fear 

certain ideas of super- 
natural agency fear 

a human corpse fear 

fear running 

fear remaining semi-paral- 
yzed 
fear trembling 



INVENTORIES OF ORIGINAL NATURE I9 

Appropriation or acquisitiveness or the proprietary instinct 

any object which pleases attention, snatching 

any object which pleases attention, begging 

Envy 

Jealousy 

To form collections 

Constructiveness 

"whatever things are 
plastic to his hands he 

must" "remodel into shapes of 

his own" 

Habitation — "to make a sheltered nook, open on only one side" 

"when not altogether 

unenclosed" "he feels less exposed 

and more at home 
than when lying all 
abroad" 

Play 

"another boy who runs 

provokingly near" running after him 

"seeing another child 

pick up some object" trying to get it 

"someone trying to take 

an object away" trying to get away 

with it 

Love of festivities, ceremonies, and ordeals 

"concerted action as one 
of an organized 
crowd" excitement 

perceiving such a crowd "a tendency to join them 

and do what they are 
doing and an unwill- 
ingness to be the first 
to leave off and go 
home alone" 

Curiosity 

Movelty in any movable 
feature of the envir- 
onment being excited and irri- 
tated 



aO THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Sociability and shyness 

being alone discomfort 

meeting a stranger shyness 

Secretiveness 

"unfamiliar human be- 
ings, especially those 

whom we respect" "the arrest of whatever 

we are saying or do- 
ing. .. .coupled often 
with the pretense that 
we were not saying 
or doing that thing, 
but possibly some- 
thing different" 

love affairs to conceal them 

Qeanliness 
"excrementitious and 
putrid things, blood, 
pus, entrails and dis- 
eased tissues" repugnance 

Modesty, shame (?) 

Personal isolation 

Love between the sexes 

Coyness 

Parental love 

Indefiniteness in Descriptions of Original Tendencies 

This list, and still more so James' full account, should sug- 
gest at once the question, "How can the description of a ten- 
dency in human nature be so made as to ensure that all con>- 
petent students can from it identify the tendency — know what 
they are to look for or argue about?" For example, no one 
doubts the truth of the statement, "The tendency which we call 
curiosity is more or less instinctive," but also no one could 
learn from it just what is instinctive. Obviously, whether 
or not a tendency is unlearned, cannot be tested until one knows 



INVENTORIES OF ORIGINAL NATURE 21 

what the tendency is well enough to observe whether it is 
present or not. Nor can a tendency be used in education or 
Other forms of social control until one knows what it itself is. 
The statement that 'Curiosity,' 'Rivalry,' 'Pugnacity,' and 'Con- 
structiveness' are original tendencies gives us more questions 
than ansvvers. 

The answer to the question is, of course, "By defining the 
tendenc}^ as a situation, a response and a degree of probability 
that apart from training the latter will happen when the former 
does." Suppose the statement about curiosity to be: "To the 
world in 'general, a child, apart from training, makes, much 
oftener than chance would allow, responses of — looking at, 
touching, tasting, manipulating and further sensory examina- 
tion. To new experiences, a child, apart from training, makes, 
much oftener than chance or other instincts would allow, re- 
sponses of feeling satisfaction and of doing nothing to avoid 
and something to continue or repeat the experiences." This 
statement, though far indeed from a model description, is 
much more suitable than the mere word 'curiosity' to guide ob- 
servation, thought and practice. Greater exactitude in the de- 
scription is to be got in the same way, by describing objectively 
further details of the situations, the responses, and their bonds. 

Often in James' list the response is described, at least in 
gross terms, such as 'weeping,' 'standing,' 'creeping,' 'follow- 
ing,' 'turning the head aside' or 'impersonating,' but the sit- 
uations are left quite unidentifiable. It is, of course, helpful to 
know that crying or turning the head aside are unlearned re- 
sponses, but it would be still more helpful to know at what 
children instinctively cry and from what objects they turn the 
head aside. Less often the situation is described, at least in 
gross terms, such as a 'sweet taste' or 'hearing a sound,' or 'the 
sight of blood,' but the responses are left unidentifiable. 'A 
characteristic grimace at a sweet taste,' though better than 
nothing, is hardly an adequate description. 'Imitating a sound 
heard' may mean anything from duplicating it to making a 
sound to some slight extent like it. 



22 the original nature of man 

Criteria of the Probable Unlearnedness of a Tendency 

A second question suggested by James' account of human 
instincts is, 'Must we, in attempting to inventory original hu- 
man nature, either rely upon intuition or canvass every ob- 
served tendency and test it to see whether it is in whole or in 
part original? Qr are there guiding principles, fundamental 
facts, which at once rule out whole classes of tendencies and 
make it very probable that other whole classes of tendencies are 
original?' James apparently uses his own and other men's in- 
tuitions in limiting the field for examination and uses the cri- 
teria of universality, blindness (the absence of foreknowledge 
of the nature or consequences of the response) and automatic- 
ity as further tests.* In the light of the work that has been 
done since his time of writing, the following further principles 
of guidance are worth notice : 

1. Any tendency to behavior characteristic of mammals 
in general has at least some likelihood of existing originally in 
man. For example, the tendencies to respond to 'a large ob- 
ject coming toward one rapidly' by 'going away from it' and 
to '3. small object going away from one slowly' by 'going 
after it,' characteristic of many mammals, should be an object 
of interest to observers of children. 

2. Any tendency characteristic of the primates in gen- 
eral except man, has some likelihood of existence in man also. 
For example, the fact that the monkeys respond quite differ- 
ently to the situations 'object being clung to by them' and 'object 
holding on to them,' though the object be the same, suggests 
that in human behavior also the situation 'the mother' or *a 
familiar person' needs further definition. 

*It may be noted that neither universality, nor blindness nor automaticity 
is a sure test of the unlearnedness of a tendency. There is probably n» 
original tendency to keep out of love with one known to be the child of one's 
mother, yet that tendency is far more nearly universal than many that are 
demonstrably instinctive. A person in moving his eyes as in reading a book 
does not know in advance how far his eyes will move, nor, as he nears the 
end of the line, whether they will move on or back — much less what the result 
will be, yet the control of eye movements in reading is surely learned. Aut«- 
maticity, of course, ntay characterize habits which are very well learned. 



INVENTORIES OF ORIGINAL NATURE 23 

3. A tendency, which, though not found in man's animal 
ancestors, can be shown to have been a probable result of likely 
variations of their original tendencies — to be in possible con- 
tinuity with their instincts — has thereby an increased possibil- 
ity of being instinctive. This principle is of little use in the 
present state of knowledge, since we do not know the exact 
line of our animal ancestors; nor, if we ^id, would we know 
the exact nature of their instinctive equipment. 

4. Universality is not itself a proof of instinctiveness. 
But any widespread and easily inhibited tendency which is 
harmful or useless under the conditions of modern civilized 
life may be suspected of being original; men tend to learn 
unanimously only what is useful to any man and also easy to 
learn. 

It is to be remembered that these principles are not criteria 
for the unlearnedness of a tendency, but only for the wisdom of 
testing its presence. Man has undoubtedly lost some of the 
original tendencies (e. g., to respond to smells) characteristic 
of the mammals in general ; he may well have never acquired, 
or have lost, some of the tendencies characteristic of the pri- 
mates in general. Man's original nature is by no means that 
of an early mammal plus certain additions proper to an early 
primate, plus his specific contribution. There has been subtrac- 
tion as well as addition. Even if the evolution of human in- 
stincts had been merely a process of addition, the criteria from 
ancestry could be valid only to guide observation, not to decide 
facts, for the sufficient reason that no one knows what the in- 
stincts of either the early mammal or the early primate were. 

5. McDougall ['08] suggests that if a tendency can be- 
come abnormally exaggerated without any general mental ab- 
normality, the tendency is probably original. "For it would 
seem that each instinctive disposition, being a relatively inde- 
pendent functional unit in the constitution of the mind, is cap- 
able of morbid hypertrophy or of becoming abnormally excit- 
able, independently of the rest of the mental dispositions and 
functions." ['08, p. 49.] 



24 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

The negative principles of guidance are : 

6. It is unlikely that the original connections are ever be- 
tween an idea and either another idea or a movement. No 
one has, I tliink, found satisfactory evidence that, apart from 
training, an idea leads of inner necessity to any one response. 
And there is good evidence to show that original connections 
are exclusively with sensory situations. In James' list, for 
instance, the only case where ideas are reported as the situations 
is the case of impersonating, or responding to the idea of an 
animal or object by mimicing it in action; and this case is 
surely doubtful. We have, of course, by original nature the 
capacities to connect the idea of one thing to the idea of another 
thing when the two have been in certain relations, and to break 
up the idea of a total fact into ideas of its elements, when once 
ideas have been given that are capable of such association and 
analysis. But we do not apparently, by original nature, have 
preformed bonds leading from ideas to anything. If ah idea 
apart from training provokes a response, it does so by virtue 
of its likeness to some sensory perception or emotion. Nor 
do we apparently by original nature respond to a situation by 
any one idea rather than another. That we think is due to 
original capacity to associate and analyze, but zvhat we think 
is due to the environmental conditions under which these ca- 
pacities Vvork. 

7. It is unlilrely that an object or act produced by human 
learning — such as a pen, a typev^Titer, a printed or spoken 
word — should provoke to any responses peculiar to it. Prob- 
ably all unlearned responses to such objects are made in ac- 
cordance with the law of analogy tliat when any situation has 
no response connected with it, tlie response made will be that 
connected with the situation most like it. 

The school of investigators v/ho have paid tlie most atten- 
tion to the concrete study of man's original tendencies have 
often unhesitatingly assumed that man's experience with the 
results of his own learning has left traces of itself in his un- 
learned responses. To these investigators our seventh prin- 



INVENTORIES OF ORIGINAL NATURE 25 

ciple will appear too strict. The justification of it against this 
criticism is to be made on the basis of the probability (to be 
discussed in Chapter XV) that the sources of original nature 
are not the learning of past generation^ but only the modifica- 
tions of their germs by inner variation. 

8. It is unlikely that man v/ill have a number of responses, 
each limited to a sharply defined situation or group of situa- 
tions, in cases where one response to some feature of many 
situations, will, when aided by the laws of habit, serve as well. 
Thus, it would be unlikely that man should be endowed with 
hundreds of separate tendencies to move the arm and hand in 
grasping, each fitted to the position of the head, position of 
the eyes, retinal impression, degree of accommodation and 
degree of convergence aroused by an object at one particular 
direction and distance from the eyes. For the tendency to 
reach vaguely, plus the tendency to alter the extent and direc- 
tion of the reaching so long as the object remained untouched, 
plus the tendency to grasp in one way after another so long as 
the object remained unheld, would sufiice nearly as well. In 
escaping from the error of leaving an instinct described only by 
results as 'reaching for an object seen,' or 'grasping an object 
touched v/ith the finger or toes,' we must not make the opposite 
error of expecting nature to have provided a ready-made special 
outfit of reaching movements for each appropriate point of 
space seen, or a special outfit of grasping movements according 
to each part of the hand touched in each position which the 
hand may take. 

All of these criteria of probabilities are intrinsically of 
slight value compared with actual observations of how, apart 
from training, the human animal does respond to situations. 
If all men, or nearly all men, did, at their first experience of a 
piano or anything like a piano, play 'Yankee Doodle' upon it, 
we should know that, in the original constitution of man's 
nervous system, this highly improbable connection did exist. 
If children, when properly tested, do not make, apart from 
training, two different responses to objects a foot away and 



^6 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

objects four feet away, we must deny the existence of an un- 
learned adaptation to distance, no matter how probable it 
seemed. But when, as is usually the case, the certainties of ob- 
served facts are lacking, these probabilities are helpful. They 
should be kept in mind throughout the discussions of the next 
nine chapters. 



chapter iv 
Sources of Information 

The special studies of unlearned tendencies in man which 
have been made since the publication of James's chapter on 
Instinct fall with few exceptions into two groups. One group 
comprises the direct observations of children, notably the biog- 
raphies of single infants, such as those by Preyer ['8i], Moore 
['96], Mrs. W. S. Hall ['96, '97], Shinn ['93, '99], and G. V. 
N. Dearborn ['10]. 

In the other group are the collections of testimony about 
various features of human behavior made by Stanley Hall and 
his pupils. 

THE DISCOVERY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES BY SYSTEMATIC 
OBSERVATIONS OF CHILDREN 

Observers of infants have rarely so arranged the circum- 
stances of the infant's life that his behavior in even the few 
most interesting cases could be surely referred to original na- 
ture on the one hand or to acquired connections on the other. 
They have in fact contented themselves as a rule with narrating 
that he did so and so at such a time. And no one of them 
since Preyer has attempted to inventory the unlearned tenden- 
cies manifested by infants in general or by one infant in 
particular. 

The task of demonstrating the unlearnedness or learned- 
ness of even a single tendency is an intricate one. To find 
out even approximately what the original tendency to respond 
is in the case of the situation, 'a garter snake seen,' it would 
be necessary to present that situation to children who had been 
carefully kept from any experience of a snake or anything like 

27 



28 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

a snake. Since the instinct might, though real, be delayed and 
transitory, it would be necessary to do this with many different 
children, some at one age, some a week or so older, some still 
older, and so on. Since original nature might furnish connec- 
tions between 'a. garter snake seen crawling toward one on the 
ground' and a certain response and still not connect 'a garter 
snake held in the hand of a familiar satisfaction-giving human 
intimate' with any such response, it would be necessaiy to de- 
fine the concomiitants of the 'garter snake seen' iti various 
ways, and to experiment with each, before denying tlie exist- 
ence of, say, an original avoiding reaction. 

Moreover, the scientific biographies of infants since Preyer 
have been much more interested in deciding W'hether the be- 
havior witnessed gave evidence of this or that conscious ele- 
ment than in deciding whether it was unlearned or learned. 

A systematic enumeration of every statement that a ten- 
dency was unlearned or instinctive in five of the more elaborate 
biographies, since Preyer's, yields very meagre returns for 
our purpose. I shall therefore not rehearse by themselves the 
scattered facts about the original nature of man to be gleaned 
from these histories of infants. They will be used, together 
with such observations as I have been able to make, in the 
provisional inventory of instincts and capacities which will be 
given in the next eight chapters. 

THE DISCOVERY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES BY A CENSUS OF 

OPINIONS 

During the past twenty years Stanley Hall, and many stu- 
dents under his direction, have surveyed concrete human be- 
havior over a wide range, summarizing the existing facts and 
opinions, seeking testimony by distributing printed questions, 
describing the gist of the testimony and adding opinions based 
upon it, and upon their own general experiences of human na- 
ture. The interest of these students has not been confined to the 
question of what in human behavior is unlearned, but that 
question has been prominent in the minds of the more thought- 



SOURCES OF INFORMATION 29 

ful and in the mind of the director of the work it has often 
been primary. 

In subject matter these studies further encourage the hope 
that they will tell how human beings respond to various fun- 
damental situations apart from learning, — what elements in 
their behavior are original. For among them are reports of 
what the responses of human beings, especially children, are 
to water, trees, clouds, dogs, dolls, the moon, puzzles and other 
important groups of situations ; and of what the situations are 
which provoke such important responses as fear, anger, love, 
pity, teasing, bullying, collecting, laughter, curiosity, rivalry, 
and jealousy. 

The value of whatever answers these studies give v/ill 
depend upon the methods of collecting and treating evidence 
which they use. In this respect they show certain notable 
peculiarities. In particular, their material is, almost without 
exception, not direct observation, but either the answers writ- 
ten in reply to a printed list of cjuestions or the papers written 
by school children as a school exercise in response to some cjues- 
tion or suggestion. 

I quote from one of the best known of these studies* at 
sufficient length to' give a rough idea of the method in its 
more successful application. 

Some of the cjuestions asked were : 

"Groivth generally. When was growth in height or weight 
greatest? Was this period of growth attended by better or de- 
ranged health? Give any details, as to how much, where, how 
long, etc. 

General Health, then and noiv. If imperfect, how, respecting 
eyes, nerves, head, stomach, etc. ? Was sleep or dreams, or appe- 
tite for food affected? 

Changes of Form and Feature. Did chin, nose, cheek-bone, 
brow, chest, hair, and other features change, and how? Was 
there a different facial expression? New resemblances? To 
whom ? 

Senses and Thought. Are the senses keener, wider ranged? 
More engrossing? Is there a change from sense to thought; 

♦Lancaster's 'Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence,' Pedagogical 
Seminary, Vol. V., pp. 61-128. 



30 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

from the present to the future ; the near to the far ? What new 
ideals, abstract or personal ? 

Language. Was it harder or easier to express oneself, and 
was there a dumb, bound feeling? Was truth-telling harder or 
easier? 

Future. Were careers, plans, vocations, trades, etc., dwelt 



upon 



Home. Did the attractiveness of home diminish, and was 
there a tendency to be out, go far away, strike out for self, seek 
new associations and friends? Should home be left part of the 
time? 

Parents and Family. Did parental influence decline? How 
differently were father and mother, brother, sister, and other 
relatives regarded? Parental authority, punishments? 

School. Was there a disposition to leave school, change stud- 
ies or teachers, defy authority, or to feel more deeply studies, 
punishments and discipline?" 

The author gives in every case of importance samples of 
the replies. For instance, from the replies to the question 
about careers, plans, vocations, etc., he quotes the following: 

"F., i8. As a child I dreamed much of the future. Wanted to 
to be a musician, elocutionist, artist, milliner, bookkeeper, dress- 
maker and a school-teacher. Have often desired to be as 
beautiful in character as Christ himself. 

F., 24. One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been to 
make plans and map out an ideal career. 

F., 20. Planned to teach in my early childhood. At 13 I 
began to declare it, and after much discussion my wish was 
granted, and I began to prepare for it, to my great delight. 

M., 50. Nothing is more intense and vivid than my plans 
for the future. One scene. A high hill with bald summit. Had 
been blamed for something and went to that peak. Alone there 
I had a very deep and never-to-be-forgotten experience. I paced 
back and forth and said : 'Now I will, / WILL, make people like 
me, and / WILL do something in the world.' I called everything 
to witness my vow. 

F., 23. My plans for the future were all for literary fame. 
School aroused my ambition and for three successive years I took 
essay prizes. 

M., 18. I look to the future. Think of myself as teaching, 
reading law, at the bar, in legislature, an active speaker always 
taking the side of right and denouncing wrong. I have had 
many ideals, one to be a minister. 

F., 19. I often think of the future and wonder what it has in 



SOURCES OF INFORMATION 31 

Store for me. I sometimes wish that ten years would pass in a 
night. 

M., 19. Planned his future and painted it with the tints of the 
seashell. 

F., 19. In mind I have planned the first day of school and 
gone through it many, many times. At one time I wanted to be 
a trained nurse. I pictured myself among the patients and how 
I would act in an operation. Then how I would study abroad 
and get a fine position." 

He also discusses each topic in a general way. The follow- 
ing is his presentation of facts and conclusions, with reference 
to the attitude of adolescents toward home, parents and family : 

"403 answered the question regarding home. 253 — 153 M., 
100 F., had a desire to leave home and strike out for themselves 
or found home less attractive. 150 — ^29 M., 121 F., had no desire 
to leave home. 

107 thought that home should be left a part of the time, 20 
thought it should not. 

As to parents and family, 281 replied. 99 — 33 M., 66 F., said 
said parental influence did decline, while 181 — 35 M., 146 F., 
found their parents just as dear and obeyed them as readily as in 
diildhood. 

100 — 32 M., 68 F., felt a disposition to leave school or did 
leave for a while during this period. 192 — 98 M., 94 F., had 
no such feeling. 

It must be borne in mind that these returns were mostly from 
normal school, high school, academy and college students, a 
majority of whom were away from home when they wrote. 

75 — 34 M., 41 F., say that punishment was felt much more 
deeply. i8 — 9 M., 9 F., experienced no change. 

This gives a very true picture of the feelings of young people 
toward home, school, and authority at this period of life, because 
the answers were given under conditions allowing free speech and 
favoring home, parents and school. It is a very forcible illustra- 
tion of the fact that a boy or girl from 12 to 18 is fully conscious 
of personality and the rights of individual recognition. 

This feeling that home is shut in and the desire to get away 
and travel, to see for oneself and form new associations, is an 
kistinct as old as the race and common to all animal life. It is 
like the migratory instinct of birds. It may spring up suddenly 
with the most obedient and well-bred children. It is not a sign 
of degeneration or of less love for the home or parents. It is 
often associated with the most intense love of home and family. 

The feeling is strongest at 16 to 18 or about the time of the 
final approach to maturity. 



32 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

The sudden feeling of rebellion against authority, which often 
surprises the child as much as the parent, is another instinctive 
habit of the race. These crop out in the best children, sometimes 
with a violence that shocks ever^-body. 

It is not necessarily a bad sign, unless frequently repeated. 
The desire to leave school, together with the desire to leave home, 
is a true and natural impulse to adjust himself to the life which 
he is already living in his imagination in company with his 
ideals. 

Sympathy, not punishment, is the proper corrective." 

The method is thus one of general inquiry, selection from 
the replies, and naive acceptance of them at their face-value. 
Its trustworthiness will vary with the topic, tlie questions, the 
answers, and the examiner of the answers. Some general 
principles, however, are sure and may guide us in estimating 
the worth of the method in any single case. First of all, the 
ignorance of a thousand people is no better than that of one; 
truth cannot be manufactured from constant errors by getting 
a great number of them. For instance, from scoring up re- 
' plies to the question, 'When did your child first reason ?' we 
do not necessarily learn anything about the date of appearance 
of reasoning, but only about opinions of people as to that date. 
From scoring up replies to the suggestion, 'Describe some miser 
of your acquaintance,' we attain knowledge, not necessarily 
of misers, but of what our correspondents notice or think they 
have noticed in some obvious types of miserliness. No re- 
search can ever attain a reliability beyond that possessed by the 
data with which it starts. And the first duty of any study of 
individual responses to questions or suggestions is to measure 
their reliability as measures of the trait in question. Adults 
even so well trained as college seniors and even in the simplest 
matters of present objective fact such as are involved in the 
questions, 'How tall are you?' and 'V\^hat is the circumference 
of your sister's head?', make gross errors. The errors increase 
in number and amount when the report requires memory; in- 
crease further when the fact is a report of subjective condition ; 
and multiply like bacilli when it involves the consideration of 
the general drift of a series of experiences. Again, no matter 



SOURCES OF INFORMATION 33 

how clearly the question is put, some individuals misunder- 
stand it. Finally, any question acts as a suggestion and with 
uncritical minds will surely produce affirmative answers. 

There are means of avoiding man}^ of these errors and 
recognizing and allowing for many of the others. But these 
means have not been used in the investigations under discus- 
sion. We can feel but little confidence in a method which pre- 
tends to secure truth from using at their face-value the an- 
swers of young people in normal schools to such questions as 
the following: 

Have liberalizing theological opinions made you better or 
worse, and how? Fed. Sent., Vol. V'., p. 8. 

What is your own temperament? Ibid., p. 13. 

Has your belief in imm.ortality been an unfoldment of your 
nature or is it the result of parental influence, scriptural teaching, 
observation of natural phenomena, loss of friends in death, or 
your own inability to conceive your existence as coming to an 
end ? Fed. San., Vol. VL, p. 287. 

What effect has [^'V] a new overcoat, high hat, high heels, 
ribbons, plumes, bright-buttoned uniforms, articles of jewelry, 
buttons, badges, etc., upon the self-confidence, self-assertiveness 
and personality of the owner? Ibid., p. 430. 

What force and motive led you to seek a higher and better 
life? Am. J. of Fsy., Vol. VHL, p. 269. 

What do you know of beggars ? Their habits, laws, customs ? 
Fed Sent., Vol. VI., p. 431. 

What studies have best developed your memory? Am. J. of 
Fsy., Vol. X., p. 229. 

Can blood pressure be tested ? Am. J. of Fsy., Vol. X., p. 529. 

In the second place the facts reported by individuals who 
respond to sets of printed questions need not, and commonly 
will not, represent the true state of affairs in the group osten- 
sibly studied. Psychological questionnaires are commonly 
sent to 'those interested' or to classes in normal schools, and 
answered by only a limited number of those who receive them 
— namely, by the individuals to whom the questions especially 
appeal and who have somicthing to report, or by those who 
answer them as an academic task. The replies thus represent 
an extremely partial sampling of people in general. More- 
over, of those who do reply, either from zeal or as a matter of 
3 



34 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

school work, only a small number answer all the questions. In 
the case of any one question, then, we get answers from very 
few, probably from those who have a positive or emphatic 
answer. We can be sure beforehand that these replies will not 
give a representation of the facts that really exist in the total 
group. Here again it would be possible to correct the bias of 
the replies from such a selected group by the study of fifty or a 
hundred individuals chosen quite at random. But this has 
never been done. 

For instance, in the case of the study already quoted, there 
were received about five hundred replies from classes in normal 
schools, colleges and academies, and about three hundred re- 
plies from individuals. The group of students certainly does 
not represent the general population. How the three hundred 
were selected we are not told, nor what proportion they were 
of the total number to whom the questions were sent. There 
was not a single question asked in the list that was answered 
by all of the 787* whose replies are the basis of the article. 
Out of the total number for each sex the following numbers 
(in percentages) replied to the different questions which the 
author discusses. 

Each number is the percentage that the nimiber of answers to some 
one question was to the number replying to the questions as a whole. 



Question. 


Males. 


Females. 


I 


17.0 


28.9 


2 


40.2 


48.9 


3 


13-2 


35-5 


4 


13-2 


14.8 


5 


10.3 


17-5 


6 


19.9 


35-2 


7 


23.6 


20.7 


8 


29.1 


55.4 


9 


72.7 


48.0 


10 


53.4 


49.6 


II 


19.9 


47 -r, 


12 


24.6 


193 


13 


34-7 


53 9 



Question. 


Males. 


Females. 


14 


II. 4 


II. 7 


15 
16 


29.3 

15-0 


41-5 
22.8 


17 


499 


77.1 


18 
19 


97-4 
85.6 


97.3 
68.6 


20 
21 


105.0 
63.1 


77.1 
63.2 


22 
23 


74.2 
81.2 


54.7 
64.8 


24 


72.4 


61.9 


25 


44.9 


5I-I 



*The author does not even take pains to make this number clear. In one 
place we read, '827 (replies) have been received . . . these answers have been 
grouped and condensed and the results will be given' (p. 67), and two pages 
later we read : '341 males and 446 females answered part or all of it' (the 
syllabus of questions). My percentages are based on this second statement, 
to avoid any possibility of injustice. From the fact that one percentage thus 
computed is 105, I regard it as likely that the 827 is correct and that mjr 
percentages are even too large by 5 per cent. 



SOURCES OF INFORMATION 35 

•These percentages range from 10.3 to 105 for males and 
from II. 7 to 97.3 for females. The averages are: Males, 44; 
females, 47. The variabilities {A. D.) are 24.7 and 16.8. 
There are marked sex differences in the number replying, the 
extremes being, women 66 per cent, as many replies as men 
and 269 per cent, as many. These facts demonstrate that 
chance is not the cause for the number of replies and failures to 
reply and that some real principles of selection do determine 
them. 

It is incredible that the 85 per cent, of men who do not 
answer at all the question, 'Were there impulses to reform 
self, others, religion, state, society, etc?' had the same feelings 
about the matter at adolescence as the 15 per cent, who did 
answer, and of whom practically all (approximately 97 per 
cent.) say, 'Yes.' The probability indeed is that of the 85 per 
cent, few or none had felt such impulses to any noticeable ex- 
tent and that the real affirmatives amongst the 341 males 
replying to the question should be reckoned at from 15 to 20 
per cent. This percentage calculated from the interested and 
from academic students would be further reduced if mechanics, 
day laborers, clerks and the rest of the youth of the land were 
studied. The figures for the girls are of the same order of 
magnitude. Yet the author says : 'This feeling ... is very 
characteristic of adolescence.' 

I have attempted to make an estimate of the partiality of the 
sampling in these studies as a whole by computing from all 
such articles in the volumes of the American Journal of Psy- 
chology and Pedagogical Seminary from 1896 to 1900, the pro- 
portion that the number of individuals replying is of the num- 
ber of individuals questioned, and the proportion that the 
number of answers to each question is of the numbers of 
individuals replying to the questionnaire as a whole. Such an 
estimate cannot be made because the ignorance or neglect of the 
fallacy of unfair selection of individuals for report has been so 
great that only one article in the eight volumes gives clearly the 
number of individuals questioned, and not even one gives full 



36 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

information regarding the number of replies received to each de- 
tailed question. Some do not even give the number of individ- 
uals replying to the questions as a whole. In the one case where 
the number of those questioned is given, less than one sixth 
replied (15.67 per cent.). 

In the third place, the use of replies to questions and of 
school compositions involves the exercise of much personal 
opinion as to the meaning of each report. Different individ- 
uals will differ somewhat even in their measurement of a line, 
will differ markedly in their estimate of the intelligence shov/n 
in any test, and would certainly differ in their rating of the 
replies to such complex and subtle questions as many of those 
on page 30, or of the school compositions on similar top- 
ics. The statements finally used to inspire conclusions are 
thus a compound of the actual reports and the subjective bias 
of the compiler. This could be avoided by the simple expedient 
of having several unbiased clerks go over the papers. By 
combining their opinions one could eliminate personal idiosyn- 
crasies of judgment. This has not been done. 

In the fourth place the progress from a set of statements 
\ about individuals to a statement about a group including them 
! is by no means a matter of simple addition. There is a 
fairly complex science of mental statistics which has been 
found necessary to keep students out of pitfalls. Failure to 
take advantage of it is always a suspicious characteristic in 
any method of studying groups. 

Conclusions about the facts studied only indirectly through 
the reports of incompetent observers, in the case of individuals 
representing a partial and undefined selection, compiled by a 
single and possibly prejudiced student, without the knowledge 
of the technique and logic of statistics, are unreliable. They 
may be true; they may be false; they are probably a mixture. 
But we cannot know how true or false they are. 

In spite of these criticisms, and others whose justice Presi- 
Ident Hall and other leaders in this type of" investigation would 
readily admit, the fact remains that we are here dealing with 



SOURCES OF INFORMATION 37 

reports which at least try to find out what human nature is in 
its rich concrete details, and which have been made by serious 
students under the direction of a psychologist of genius. 
Respect for their aim if not for their results, and for his ability 
if not for his method, requires due consideration for these 
reports. It would be futile to pass these reports by because 
they lack careful experimentation upon human instincts, for 
so do practically all others. 

They have therefore been searched for observations and 
opinions concerning the unlearned tendencies of man. Any 
definite statements which they contain as to what is, in the 
opinion of the author in question, unlearned in human fears, 
sympathies, plays, behavior toward water, stones, trees, clouds, 
flowers and the like, will, as a rule, be quoted unless it is 
demonstrably based on an improper use of testimony. They 
will be cjuoted very rarely, however, for the simple reason that 
in all their thousands of pages there are very, very few definite 
statements as to what, after all, is instinctive in the behavior 
in question. A student reads hundreds of reports of the be- 
havior of children toward dogs, for example, but at the end 
is unable to say whether children of any assigned age, apart 
from experience, do or do not run from, or go to, dogs. 

OTHER SOURCES 

Besides the biographies of children and the censuses of 
anecdotes and opinions made by Stanley Hall's pupils, there 
are observations and discussions of varying degrees of merit 
scattered throughout the literature of biology, psychology, 
anthropology, sociology and education. These have been util- 
ized so far as I have found them. Such observations of chil- 
dren as have been reported by such deliberate students of 
original nature as James ['93], Robinson ['91, '93, '94], 
Cooley ['02], Kirkpatrick ['03], and McDougall ['08] are 
specially deserving of attention from any reader who wishes 
to test critically the account given in this volume. 

There is a possibility that critical examination of the 



38 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

reports of the behavior of primitive groups would disclose orig^ 
inal tendencies which are masked by the artificial situations, or 
overgrown by the acquired habits, of more civilized life. It 
must be borne in mind, however, that even the most primitive 
races lead lives w^hose situations are in large measure consti- 
tuted by the customs of the tribe, the presence of tools, and 
other products of learning, and that in many respects they early 
acquire habits so remote from original nature as effectually 
to conceal it. The sex instincts, for example, seem to be re- 
directed by almost as elaborate a network of customs in their 
case as in ours. The detailed reports of travelers and field- 
workers I have consulted only very casually. The standard 
summaries of primitive man's behavior, especially any accounts 
of his behavior in childhood, I have examined, but with slight 
results in the shape of definite evidence or judgments about 
unlearned tendencies. I regret that I have been unable to go 
through the detailed reports^ concerning particular tribes. 

The statements made about man's original tendencies in 
such sociological books and short reports as I have examined 
are rarely suitable for direct use here. The distinction be- 
tween inherent and acquired traits is rarely made a prime con- 
sideration by their authors. The student of the concrete facts 
of human nature will, however, get many hints concerning the 
probable original equipment of capacities and direction of in- 
terests from the matter^-of-fact sociologists. He will also 
enrich his general sense of human nature greatly. 

The literature of animal behavior is, of course, funda- 
mental, as a means of understanding the general features of un- 
learned tendencies, their place in nature, their physiological 
basis, and their development up to man. There will be few 
quotations from this literature because the original nature 
of man only is the present topic, but I trust that my descrip- 
tions of human instincts and capacities everywhere rest on a 
proper knowledge and appreciation of comparative psychology. 

In spite of efforts to do full justice to what has been written 
on human instincts, I must frankly confess that nothing beyond 



SOURCES OF INFORMATION 39 

my own personal observation and reflection can be advanced 
to support the great majority of the statements which consti- 
tute the inventory and description of man's original nature 
given in the following chapters. 

THE INSECURITY OF PRESENT INFORMATION 

It would perhaps be wiser to abandon the effort to define 
man's original responses and the situations to which they are 
bound. There would probably be an enormous range within 
even expert opinion about which the original responses are 
to even such common situations as cats, dogs, water, fire, 
thunder, lightning or the dark. It is then clearly impossible 
to guarantee the accuracy of any inventory that anyone could 
now make. The facts have not been studied long enough or 
by careful enough methods. Moreover, as one tries to come 
to some conclusion about this or that tendency, he finds, as 
has been hinted already, almost insuperable obstacles in the 
artificiality of modern life, the possible transitoriness of the 
original tendencies, and their inhibition or immediate trans- 
formation by acquired tendencies. 

A modern home in a modern community eliminates alto- 
gether many of the situations to which original human nature 
would probably show clean-cut responses and modifies almost 
all those which it does not eliminate. Civilization is to the 
original nature of man as a species somewhat as a European 
capital would be to the habits of an Eskimo. The infer- 
ence from his behavior in Paris to what his ordinary life had 
been would be complicated and unsafe; so with the inference 
from what babies do in nurseries, children in schools and men 
in industry, sport and politics, to what their original tenden- 
cies were. 

If a tendency persists over several years, as do the in- 
stincts of sex or the readiness to start, shrink and be afraid 
in the dark, it may show itself, at least in a distorted and com- 
plicated form. But if it passes after a brief epoch of efficiency, 
it may, under the conditions of modern life, never show itseli 



40 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

at all. Thus the tendency to climb and perch in trees seems 
to be original in man, but does not show itself at all univer- 
sally in city children. The writer has some reason to think 
that retrieving is instinctive with children for a brief period in 
the second or third year. The fact that no one else has re- 
corded the possibility would in this case be of little weight, 
for, under ordinary conditions today, possibly not one child 
in four has, during its brief ascendency, any chance to display it. 

After the first half-year or less, original nature and nurture 
cooperate almost inextricably. By the time that an original 
tendency is ripe its situation may already have acquired bonds 
with other responses than those nature provides. Thus, al- 
though for many reasons it seems fairly certain that being 
alone in the dark is objectionable to the original nature of chil- 
dren from say three to eight, children of that age who have 
hitherto been consistently kept comfortable when alone in the 
dark may seem to show just the opposite. 

An original tendency may also have been subdued by 
mere lack of exercise, or by having its exercise result in discom- 
fort, or in some symbol for or warning of discomfort. Thus, 
it is almost certain that the original response toward a live 
chicken is, if one is hungry, to chase, capture and devour it, 
but it is almost equall}^ certain that not one ten-year-old in a 
hundred in New York City would so respond. 

An original tendency may also, though preserved in part, 
be amended into behavior from which it can be analyzed out 
only by an elaborate study of life-histories and acute inference 
from what experience has done to what there was at the start 
for experience to vv'ork on. Thus, the personal adornment and 
display of young people is doubtless ultimately traceable to 
original tendencies, but just what those tendencies comprise 
can be figin-ed out only by subtracting the effects of centuries 
of traditional millinery, warfare, and rom.antic conventions. 

Lack of observations of human behavior and the difficulty 
in interpreting the facts that have been observed which is the 
consequence of a civilized environment, the transitoriness of 



SOURCES OF INFORMATION 4I 

instincts and the early incessant and intimate interaction of 
nature and nurture, thus baffle the cataloguer of original 
tendencies. 

The need for an inventory of man's original nature, how- 
ever, is very great. It is needed as a basis, not only for educa- 
tional, but also for economic, political, ethical and religious 
theories. Indeed, all the sciences of human nature, from med- 
icine to literary criticism, demand of the psychologist an ac- 
curate account of how, apart from all training, man would re- 
spond to all possible situations. The physician should know 
whether original nature lets a child eat too much and chew it not 
enough; the criminologist should know the relative shares of 
nature and nurture in the production of assault or theft; the 
statesman should know how far the efforts of men to gain 
wealth are rooted in an instinctive love of possession — of 
property as such — and how far they are caused by the love of 
generalized power; the student of religion inquires v/hether 
there are, apart from training, any tendencies to respond to the 
world-spirit. 

Let it be admitted that the inventory to be given here is 
only a probable one, — that the writer's personal judgment, 
possibly his mere intuition, is often the final cause for admit- 
ting a tendency as original or excluding it as a product of 
learning, — and that almost every statement that will be 
made is more properly a question for investigation than a 
doctrine to be assumed true in the social control of children 
and men. Even so provisional an account is likely to be 
superior to the extravagances and superstitions in which edu- 
cational theories and so-called common sense abounds. So I 
offer it for whatever it may be worth. For the reader's con- 
venience this inventory of original nature will be presented for 
the most part dogmatically. Any adequate discussion of the 
evidence for and against each item, of it would sim^ply burden 
him in each case with a mass of observations and opinions of 
all degrees of relevance and merit, the sublimation of which 
into a definite probability would be intolerably tedious. The 



42 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

reader will, I beg, remember that in spite of this dogmatic 
form, the statements to be made are only the best answers the 
writer can give to questions which science at present should 
perhaps ask rather than answer at all. 

Finally, the inventory to be given here makes no pretence 
of completeness. On the contrary, it is limited definitely to 
the aim of giving a general sense of what may be expected of 
man's original nature, such as is needed to guide educational 
theory and practice. 



chapter v 

Responses of Sensitivity, Attention and Gross 
Bodily Control 

The arrangement of my inventory will be modified from 
that which a strictly scientific classification would suggest, so as 
to fit the reader's convenience, and to make connections with 
the treatment of instincts and capacities in present psycho- 
logical literature. Ideally the arrangement should be according 
to some rational grouping of the situations life offers, or of 
the responses which men can make. I have only very roughly 
approximated the latter sort of arrangement, the various ten- 
dencies to connect situation and response which I list* being 
grouped according to the responses in question, as : — 

those resulting in sensitivities 
those resulting in attention 
those resulting in gross bodily control 
those resulting in food'-getting and habitation 
those resulting in fear, fighting and anger 
those resulting in human intercourse 
those resulting in satisfaction and discomfort 
those resulting in minor bodily movements and cerebral con- 
nections 
those resulting in the emotions and their expression 
those resulting in consciousness, learning and remembering 

*Certain events connect, apart from all training, with movements of man's 
body which are fully explained by mechanics or hydrostatics, such as a baby's 
falling when it is dropped, or being squeezed when sat upon. Such connections 
whereby the animal acts in the same way, whether alive or dead, will of course 
not be considered here. Nor will the connections of which current physiology 
already gives an account, such as the knee-jerk, the contraction of the pupil 
in bright light, the absorption of oxygen by the red blood-corpuscles, and the 
Mke. 

43 



44 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

This grouping will not be rigidly adhered to, and in at 
least one case, the connections leading to responses of social 
intercourse, the group is as truly of connections leading* from 
the behavior of other human beings. 

SENSORY CAPACITIES 

To certain situations man responds originally by special 
changes in the first sensory neurones and, through these, by 
special changes in other neurones. He is thus affected by the 
situation 'a certain substance in touch with the olfactory mem- 
brane' as he is not by the situation 'that substance in touch with 
his fingers.' To the general pressure, absorption of heat and 
what not that the substance causes in both cases, there are added, 
in the former case, special effects, notably the excitement of 
certain neurones giving the sensation of smell. '^- Well-known 
illustrations of original tendencies to sensitivity are the capaci-' 
ties to receive special impressions via the cones of the retina 
from light waves of 450 to 750 million million vibrations per 
second, that are not received from those of 350 million million 
vibrations (the infra-red) ; and to be influenced by air waves 
of 30 to 30,000 vibrations per second as one is not by air waves 
of 50,000 and over per second, and tlie like. All the remain- 
ing original tendencies hang by these tendencies to be sensi- 
tive to certain situations in ways in which a stone, a drop of 
water, or a potato-plant is not. Sensitivity, or impressibilit}^ 
or receptivity, is the necessary preliminary to attention, ap- 
proach, flight, and all other features of original intellect and 
character. 

It must not be supposed that the neurone-action which is 
set up by a given stimulus in touch with a given sense- 
organ in a trained adult can fairly be taken as that by which 
he would have responded to the same situation originally, 
r Even in sensory capacities original and eventual nature differ."^) 
The states of consciousness which vil^rations of the ether of 
a given rate, or the air-vibrations caused by a given tuning 
fork, or the presence on the tip of the tongue of a tiny drop 



SENSITIVITY^ ATTENTION AND BODILY CONTROL 45 

of saturated salt-solution, and the like, provoke by their orig- 
inal connections are probably very unlike the states of con- 
sciousness which the trained analytical psychologist knows. 
The latter does not, by attending to one after another feature of 
the sensed world, eliminate the results of acquired connections. 
On the contrary, his analysis itself occurs precisely by acquiring 
new connections. The overtone which one hears along with 
the fundamental, after training in getting it separately and in 
listening for it in the complex, is created by forming, with a 
part of the stimulus, connections which that part originally 
lacked and so letting it produce a consciousness which it did 
not originally produce. The original capacities of sensation 
do not give us the clear sounds, colors, pressures, degrees of 
heat and cold, and the like, in which long experience has taught 
us to feel the world. To get an idea of the vvay the world 
would be sensed apart from training, we must subtract all 
that we know about it, and all the definite 'things,' 'qualities' 
and 'relations' which have, in the course of training, been 
analyzed out of the flux of gross sensations. We must take as 
types, the sensations which an adult psychologist gets from 
suffocation, heart-burn, itching or nausea rather than those 
which he gets from a black dot, a lOO-vibration tuning fork, or 
a band of spectral light. 

For educational theory and practice, indeed, it is often 
more instructive to consider what is not original in human sen- 
sitiveness to events than what is. That 'dead' and 'bead' are 
seen by an adult reader as- they are not by the beginner; 
that >' does not look the same to one who cannot add or count 
as it does to us; that the separate tones in a chord may not 
be heard by original nature — such facts as these are the most 
significant results which a student of education gets from sur- 
veying sensory capacities. Just as the training of the expert 
musician makes him hear a symphony as the beginner does 
not, or as the expert tea-taster has acquired tastes which the 
same objects once did not give, — so training in reading, 
mathematics and geography makes a pupil see letters, words, 



46 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

geometrical forms, magnitudes, collections, maps and photo- 
graphs anew; and so the general training of infancy changes 
the original perceptions in response to the different vibration- 
rates of light, degrees of temperature, or amplitudes of sound 
waves. 

With this caution the student is referred to the standard 
accounts of the physiology and psychology of the sensory ca- 
pacities for details concerning what outside events are 'sensed' 
by man and what events in his sense-organs and associated 
neurones correspond to this 'sensing.' 

ORIGINAL ATTENTIVENESS 

Of the situations to which man is sensitive some originally 
excite the further responses — of disposing him, especially his 
sense organs and central nervous system, to be more em- 
phatically impressed thereby — which we call responses of at- 
tention to the situations in question. Thus, he moves his head 
and eyes so that the light rays from a bright-colored object 
moving across the visual field are kept upon or near the spot 
of clear vision. The features which are so selected for special 
influence upon man vary with sex and age, but are substan- 
tially covered by the rule that man is originally attentive (i) 
to sudden change and sharp contrasts and (2) to all the situor- 
tions to zvhicJi he has further tendencies to respond, as by flight, 
pursuit, repulsion, play and the like. 

Since, as will be seen in the following chapters, man has 
tendencies to respond to an enormous range of situations by 
visual exploration, manipulation, curiosity and experimenta- 
tion, his attentiveness is omnivorous to an extent not ap- 
proached by any other animals save the monkeys, and far from 
equalled by them. Very early the human infant devotes a large 
fraction of his waking hours to watching what is and happens 
in his neighborhood. When he gains control of reaching and 
grasping he examines what he can move. When he gains 
power to move about, he attends to almost every object that 
he can get to until its possibilities as a stimulus to manipula- 



SENSITIVITY^ ATTENTION AND BODILY CONTROL 47 

tion and experimentation are exhausted. In the meantime, 
parts of his own body and the sounds that he and the persons 
and things about him make have been selected from t"he total 
medleys in which they inhere by the preparation of the sense- 
organs, and perhaps of the neurones associated therewith, to be 
stimulated by this or that sight or sound or touch. 

One is tempted to assert that man is originally attentive to 
everything until its novelty wears off. But certain notable 
lacks show that original attentiveness is the sum of many par*- 
ticular tendencies and not an indifferent general capacity. 
For example, man lacks the attentiveness to small differences 
in smells, or small intrusions of new smells into a familiar 
medley, which is so characteristic of many mammals. 

GROSS BODILY CONTROL 

How far man's management of his body in holding up his 
head, sitting, standing, walking, running, stooping, jumping 
up, jumping down, leaping at, crouching, lying down, rolling 
over, climbing, dodging, stooping to pick up, raising oneself 
again, balancing, clinging, pushing with arms and with legs, 
pulling with arms, and in such other movements of position, 
locomotion and the displacement of large objects as man has in 
common with the primates in general, is unlearned, is still a 
disputed question. Reputable opinion can be cited in support 
of remote extremes. 

It appears to the writer that the contribution from training 
is slight, that these accomplishments are in origin much more 
like breathing, winking or sucking, than like playing tennis, 
dancing or swimming. The case of walking is instructive. 
Here, although, under the conditions of civilized family life, 
children appear to learn, or even to be taught, to walk, it has 
been shown that the appearance is illusory.* The baby's trials 
with varying and increasing success are not the causes of a 
habit, but the symptoms of a waxing instinct. The parent's 

*See, for example, Kirkpatrick ['03], pp. 79-81: Trettien ['oo], p. 42; 
Woodworth ['03], p. 315. 



48 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

tuition does not create a tendency, but only stimulates or re- 
wards it. 

How easily a clear case of unlearnedness may remain un- 
observed is shown by the now well-known clinging reaction of 
the infant in the first week of life. The facts as described 
by Robinson, who first noted this instinct, are typical : 

"Finding myself placed in a position in which material 
was abundant, and available for reasonable experiment, I com- 
menced a series of systematic observations with the purpose 
of finding out what proportion of young infants had a notice- 
able power of grip, and what was the extent of the power. I 
have made now records of upwards of sixty cases in which 
the children were under a month old, and in at least half 
of these the experiment was tried within an hour of birth. 
The results as given below are, as I have already indicated, 
both curious and unexpected. 

"In every instance, with only two exceptions, the child was 
able to hang on to the finder or a small stick three-quarters 
of an inch in diameter by its hands, like an acrobat from a hor- 
izontal bar, and sustain the whole weight of its body for at least 
ten seconds. In twelve cases, in infants under an hour old, 
half a minute passed before the grasp relaxed, and in three or 
four nearly a minute. When about four days old I found that 
the strength had increased, and that nearly all, when tried at 
this age, could sustain their weight for half a minute." ['91, 
p. 837 f.] 

It must be remembered further that gradualness in appear- 
ing and imperfections in early manifestations are entirely con- 
sistent with unlearnedness. The 'perfecting' of a tendency 
may come from the mere inner growth that time implies as 
well as from exercise and tuition. Thus the reactions of run- 
ning, crouching and chirring by chicks when a large object 
is thrown at them are surely unlearned but develop gradually. 
The reactions of roosters in combat are surely unlearned but 
are at the start so 'imperfect' that unless one traces their be- 
havior continuously he will hardly even recognize the early 
manifestations. (These are that two chicks, as young even as 
six days, will suddenly rush at each other, face each other for 



SENSITIVITY, ATTENTION AND BODILY CONTROL 49 

a moment and then go about their previous business.) 'Im- 
perfection' at the start and graduahiess in development are the 
rule rather than the exception with all original tendencies. 

I judge therefore that children gain power to manage their 
bodies in connection with the movements listed above, as re- 
quired by the ordinary exigencies of an animal-like life in the 
woods, largely by,the inner development of original tendencies.* 
Just how largely cannot be said. I do not assert that man, or 
any of the mammals, would manage his body as well without 
experience as with it, or that all the gross bodily manipula- 
tions listed are as well developed by original nature as walking 
is. But the notion that these activities develop by trial and 
success and imitation wholly, or Avith slight assistance from 
some very indefinite 'predispositions,' does seem indefensible 
as an account of their causation in the children whom I have 
had opportunity to observe. The 'predispositions' can, on the 
contrary, be relied on to produce the behavior with a ver}?- small 
amount of assistance from the pains of stumbling, falling, 
going in the wrong- direction and the like, and v/ith no assist- 
ance at all from imitation. 

Darwin long ago noted that 'everyone protects himself 
when falling to the ground by extending his arms' ['72, p. 31]. 
Moore ['96], observed that a child who had never fallen or 
been hurt through lack of support nevertheless clutched the 
person holding him when the wagon lurched or when he was 
lifted during sleep. A child very early changes an object from 
one hand to anotlier, stoops and stands up, and the like, so far 
as one can see, by original coordinations. It is my prophecy 
that very many such original powers of bodily control will 
be found by proper experimentation. 

*If this is the fact, the customary incitements of the mn"ery are largely 
useless and possibly harmful. So also with many of the maternal precautions 
against childish adventures in locomotion. 



chapter vi 

Food Getting, Protective Responses, and Anger 

FOOD getting 

Eating. — Of the early suckling and seeking the breast, and 
the various original responses to objects once they are in the 
mouth, nothing need be said here, save that sucking move- 
ments at a sweet taste, separating the posterior portions of the 
tongue and palate at a bitter taste, spitting and letting drool 
out of the mouth at very sour, very salt, acrid, bitter, and oily 
objects, and turning the head to one side in rejection of food 
when satiated, are partial foundations of the bodily expressions 
of enjoyment and disgust in general. 

Reaching, grasping and putting into the mouth deserve more 
consideration here because of the knowledge of the external 
world to which they lead. Reaching is not a single instinct, 
but includes at least three somewhat different responses to three 
very different situations. First, to the situation 'not being 
closely cuddled,' there is, in young infants, the tendency to 
respond by reaching and clutching, especially when any element 
of agitation is added to the situation. Second, to the situation, 
'an object attended to and approximately within reaching dis- 
ance,'* there is the tendency to reach, maintaining the exten- 

*It has generally been assumed that man has to learn to respond 
appropriately to distance — .that, for example, a child will reach for the 
moon as readily as for a similar bright object a foot or so away. But I 
am unable to verify this opinion. Of perhaps fifty observant parents whom 
I have questioned, not one could be sure that his children ever reached 
for the moon. The apparent cases of children reaching for objects quite 
out of reach seem referable to the diffuse waving of arms in excitement, 
the holding out of arms toward a familiar person (not to take, but to be 
taken), or the later pointing at objects. 

50 



FOOD GETTING^ PROTECTIVE RESPONSES, ANGER $1 

sion until the object is grasped. Third, to the situation, 'an 
attractive object seen,' there is the tendency to reach and 
point at, often with the addition, as James notes, of "a pecuHar 
sound expressive of desire." 

In an environment in which household utensils and toys 
largely replace berry bushes and scraps of food from the family 
feedings, and in which regular meals are supplied according to 
more or less civilized customs, reaching, grasping and putting 
in the mouth shift largely from what is probably their primary 
function of preparation for, and first steps in, food getting, and 
blend with the general manipulation of small objects. The 
accompanying visual, tactile and gustatory examination of the 
object blends similarly with the general tendency to get experi- 
ence merely for the sake of having it. The food-getting re- 
sponses are thus one root of what, as physical and mental play 
or constructiveness and curiosity, all must recognize as main 
origins of intellect and skill. 

Acquisition and Possession. — To any not too large object 
which attracts attention and does not possess repelling or 
frightening features the original response is approach or, if the 
child is within reaching distance, reaching, touching and grasp- 
ing. An object having been grasped, its possession may pro- 
voke the response of putting it in the mouth, or of general 
manipulation, or both. The sight of another human being 
going for the object or busied with it strengthens the ten- 
dencies toward possession. To resistance the response is pull- 
ing and twisting the object and pushing away whoever or 
whatever is in touch with it. Failure to get nearer, when one 
has moved toward such an object of attention, and failure to 
grasp it when one reaches for it, provoke annoyance, more 
vigorous responses of the same sort as before and the neural 
action which produces an emotion which is the primitive form 
of desire. 

To the situation, 'a person or animal grabbing or making 
off with an object which one holds or has near him as a result 
of recent action of the responses of acquisition,' the responses 



52 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

are: — ^the neural action paralleling the primitive emotion of 
anger, a tight clutch on the object, and pushing, striking and 
screaming at the intruder. 

Hunting. — It is not hard to show that man's original na- 
ture somehow leads to activities which justify James' inclusion 
of a hunting instinct. But it is hard to discover just what the 
hunting instinct is. It is, for instance, doubtful wdiether James 
is right in assuming the 'hunting' response toward "all living 
beasts, great and small," and toward "all human beings in 
whom v>'e perceive a certain intent toward us, and a large num- 
ber of human beings who offend us peremptorily, either by 
their look, or gait, or by some circumstance in their lives which 
we dislike." Is there perhaps, on the contrary, so specialized 
a tendency as that to rob birds' nests, as Schneider maintains ? 
Just what, in any case, are the situations and the responses, 
referred to by the hunting instinct? 

In the writer's opinion they are as follows : 

To *a small escaping object,' man, especially if hungry, 
responds, apart from training, by pursuit, being satisfied when 
he draws nearer to it. When within pouncing distance, he 
pounces upon it, grasping at it. If it is not seized he is an- 
noyed. If it is seized, he examines, manipulates and dismem- 
bers it, unless some contrary tendency is brought into action 
by its sliminess, sting or the like. To 'an object of moderate 
size and not of offensive mien moving away from or past him' 
man originally responds much as noted above, save that in 
seizing the object chased, he is likely to throw himself upon it, 
bear it to the ground, choke and maul it until it is completely 
subdued, giving then a cry of triumph. 

With both small and larger 'game,' there is, I think, a ten- 
dency to bring the captured animal to some familiar human 
being. 

The responses of cautious approach, of fighting, of avoid- 
ance and of protective behavior may be mingled in all sorts of 
ways with the hunting responses in accordance with variations 
in the size of the animal, the offensiveness of its mien, and 



FOOD GETTING^ PROTECTIVE RESPONSES^ ANGER 53 

the struggle it makes when seized, and in accordance with its 
alternations from flight to resistance or attack. 

The presence of this tendency in man's nature under the 
conditions of civilized life gets him little food and much trouble. 
There being no wild animals to pursue, catch and torment 
into submission or death, household pets, young and timid 
children, or even aunts, governesses or nurse-maids, if suffi- 
ciently yielding, provoke the responses from the young. The 
older indulge the propensity at great cost of time and money 
in hunting beasts, or at still greater cost of manhood in hound- 
ing Quakers, abolitionists, Jews, Chinamen, scabs, prophets, or 
suffragettes of the non-militant variety. Teasing, bullying, 
cruelty, are thus in part the results of one of nature's means of 
providing self and family with food : and w^hat grew up as a 
pillar of human self-support has become so extravagant a 
luxury as to be almost a vice. 

Possible Specialized Tendencies. — It is possible that ten- 
dencies to seek particular objects as food and to capture them 
by specialized sets of movements may also be original in man. 
Thus Schneider ['82] thinks that bird's nests and eggs are 
situations of particular potency to attract attention and posses- 
sion, and Acher ['10] seems to think that throwing stones, 
hitting with a club, and cutting with pointed objects are re- 
sponses apart from learning. It has been asserted that there is 
a special instinct to insert the fingers into crannies (to dislodge 
small animals hidden there) ! There is some evidence to 
show that a small object held out or tossed to a young human 
is more readily seized and tasted than one otherwise encount- 
ered, and that he will eat food that he himself picks up more 
readily than the same food when put in his mouth by another. 

Collecting and Hoarding * — There is originally a blind ten- 
dency to take portable objects which attract attention, and 

*These tendencies are listed here rather than in the miscellaneous group 
because far back in the animal series they probably developed in connection 
with the food-getting tendencies, though in man today and in some other 
animals the connection is perhaps entirely absent. 



54 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

carry them to one's habitation. There is the further response 
of satisfaction at contemplating and fingenng them there. 
These tendencies commonly crystallize into hcoits of collecting 
and storing certain sorts of objects whose possession has addi- 
tional advantages, and abort as responses to other objects whose 
possession brings secondary annoyances. Thus, money, mar- 
bles, strings, shells, cigar-tags and picture-postals become fav^ 
ored objects by their power in exchange, convenience of car- 
riage, permanent attractiveness and utility in play.* But clear 
evidences of the original tendency may remain, as in those who 
feel a craving to gather objects which they know will be a 
nuisance to them or who cannot bear to diminish hoards which 
serve no purpose save that of being a hoard. So of the man 
who stole utensils from his own kitchen to increase his hoard, 
and bought substitutes ! 

Avoidance and Repulsion. — To the situations, 'bitter a'n<I 
oily things in the mouth, slimy, wriggling and creeping things 
on one's flesh, the sight and smell of putrid flesh, excrement 
and entrails,' there are original tendencies to respond respect- 
ively by spitting out and retching, jumping back or shrinking 
or shuddering, and turning away, and in common by the neural 
action which produces feelings of disgust. 

Rivalry and Cooperation. — Instinctive rivalry and cooper- 
ation in food-getting and pugnacity when dispossessed will be 
noted amongst the instincts of social intercourse. 

HABITATION 

James' description of the original satis fyingness of having 
something fairly close over one's head and behind one's back 
when resting deserves quotation in full : 

"There can be no doubt that the instinct to seek a sheltered 
nook, open on only one side, into which he may retire and be 
safe, is in man quite as specific as the instinct of birds to build 
a nest. It is not necessarily in the shape of a shelter from wet 

*For an instructive account of the results of the instinct under the con- 
ditions of modem life, see C. F. Burk ['oo], The Collecting Instinct, 
Pedagogical Seminary, vol. 7, pp. 179-207. 



FOOD GETTING, PROTECTIVE RESPONSES, ANGER 55 

and cold that the need comes before him, but he feels less 
exposed and more at home when not altogether unenclosed than 
when lying all abroad. . . . Habits of the most complicated 
kind are reared upon it. But even in the midst of these habits 
we see the blind instinct cropping out ; as, for example, in the 
fact that we feign a shelter by backing up beds in rooms with 
their heads against the wall, and never lying in them the other 
way. . . . The first habitations were caves and leafy grot- 
toes, bettered by the hands; and we see children today, when 
playing in wild places, take the greatest delight in discovering 
and appropriating such retreats and 'playing house' there.'* 
['93, vol. 2, pp. 426 ff.] 

It is an instructive experiment to compare the behavior of 
children to a blanket hung over two chairs, with their behavior 
toward the same chairs put on the blanket ; or to compare one's 
own hesitation between the rational hygiene which keeps beds 
out of alcoves and the instinctive impulse to put them just 
there. 

Responses to Confinement. — Being shut up completely 
within a small and especially a strange enclosure, on the other 
hand, probably calls forth instinctive discomfort and screaming 
in the very young, and pulling, pushing and kicking at the 
barriers, in those older. 

Migration and Domesticity. — Kline ['98] believes in the 
unlearnedness of the migratory tendency, but not in its uni- 
versality. He quotes, as evidence, many cases where the sat- 
isfaction of change of surroundings — of being in motion from 
the old to the unknown — was gratified at the sacrifice of many 
rationally more attractive goods,* and also cases of sheer blind 

*Says Flynt : "I have known men on the road who were tramping 
purely and simply because they loved to tramp. They had no appetite for 
liquor or tobacco, so far as I could find, also were quite out of touch with 
criminals and their habits ; but somehow or other they could not conquer 
that passion for roving. In a way this type of vagabond is the most pitiful 
that I have ever known; and yet is the truest type of the genuine voluntary 
vagrant. ... To reform him it is necessary to kill his personality, to take 
away his ambition — and this is a task almost superhuman. Even when he 
is reformed he is a most cast down person." [Josiah Flynt, '85, quoted 
by Kline, '98, p. 3.] 



56 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

impulsive running away from the familiar surroundings. On 
the other hand, as he admits and emphasizes, homesickness 
or dissatisfaction at change of surroundings, at the absence of 
famihar objects or persons or both seems equally unlearned 
and uncalculating. 

It is probable that to the situation, 'the long familiar physi- 
cal and social environment' there may be in original nature 
two opposite tendencies, to be content and remain and to be 
annoyed and depart, other conditions in the person deciding 
which shall predominate. Old age, femaleness and physical 
weakness, for example, seem to favor the former response; 
adolescence, maleness and energy seem to favor the latter. 

Both tendencies certainly can be shown by the same indi- 
vidual. The case would thus be like, and probably one mani- 
festation of, the instinctive interest in the objects associated 
with one's life, one's house, possessions, friends and the like, 
combating the equally instinctive interest in novelty and ad- 
venture. In certain individuals one or the other original tend- 
ency may be specially strong so as to counterbalance the other 
satisfactions and discomforts of the case, but for the great 
majority the attractiveness of the familiar is determined far 
more by what it has gone zvith than by its mere familiarity, and 
the call of the unknown is chiefly in terms, not of its mere nov- 
elty, but of its promise of other specific satisfactions. It is 
important to note that even Dr. Kline finds that home is 
cherished in large measure because of the kindness of parents 
compared with strangers, because one's customary habits are 
not interfered with, and because of freedom for one's individ- 
uality. Home is left in large measure because of injury (real 
or fancied) received from parents, because of loneliness, and 
because one's new desires are interfered with. That is, in 
large measure home is cherished or abandoned for just the 
same reasons. The same response occurs to the same element 
whether found in the home or outside it. 

Consequently the unlearned tendencies to respond to mere 
home and vicre absence, even if real, are of little consequence. 



FOOD GETTING^ PROTECTIVE RESPONSES^ ANGER 57 

So far as migration keeps other things equal and affords more 
new interesting experiences, it has the advantage of stronger 
appeal to the love of physical and mental activity. This, more 
than a mere wanderlust for v\^andering's own sake, is probably 
the cause of the widespread fascination of travel. 



FEAR 

Fear is an original tendency that has been much studied* 
and may profitably be described here in enough detail to serve 
as a sample of some of the difficulties in the task of distin- 
guishing what is original in human behavior. 

It is customary for writers about human nature to use the 
word fear as if it meant a well-known fact about whose de- 
scription there would be no more disagreement than about 
length or breadth, or, at least, than about nose-bleed or hunger. 
That this is far from being true is clear from the answers from 
persons of probably superior intelHgence and knowledge to 
Stanley Hall's set of questions ['97, p. 148 f.] about fear. 
Some interpret fear as unpleasant expectation ; some, as dread ; 
some, as anxiety; some, as worry; some, as dislike; some, as 
avoidance; some, as shock or consternation; some, as flight; 
some, as paralysis. The following quotations from the an- 
swers Illustrate the variety of inner affections and outer behavior 
which the word fear signifies : — 

Unpleasant expectation and dread. 

"She is always fearing- that meteors will drop on her." 
Anxiety and zvorry. 

"Has a chronic fear that her father is to die; although he 
is well, she fancies all the details, and suffers over and over as 
much as if it were real." 

*Its bodily expressions have been described at length by Darwin ['72] 
and others ; Mosso [English translation of fifth edition in '96] has written 
a book entitled Fear, though much of it concerns emotional expression in 
general ; and Stanley Kali ['97] has filled a hundred pages with descrip- 
tions and explanations of the commonest fears of childhood and aduh life. 



58 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

"Suffers from the constant fear of losing the points of 
the compass." 
Dislike and avoidance. 

"Could not bring herself to touch another's teeth." 
"A young man could not board in the house with a young 
lady because she worked in an undertaker's factory." 

"Never can look on the parts of animals in the physiology 
class." 

"Feared the bureau where an uncle kept his glass eye." 
Shock. 

"Starts at every little thing twenty times a day; her heart 
leaps to her throat." 
Flight, paralysis and other forms of behavior. 

"The sight of a mouse always gives her hysteria." 
"Every time the wind whistled or made any kind of noise 
would run to his mother's lap." 

"Used to fall in pariic at shadow." 
"Sweats and cannot move in a thunder-shower." 
"Always shudders when looking at clouds." 
"Can enter a dark place with composure, but the moment 
she turns her back to come out she has the horrors, must gen- 
erally run, and sometimes scream." 

"Is dizzy, cramped and nauseated at green worms." 
"Shows his horror of touching fur by putting both hands 
behind h'im and spitting vigorously." 

From such facts it appears that, while each writer may 
know definitely what he means by fear (though I think not), 
it is almost certain that not all writers will mean the same 
thing, and it is absolutely certain that not all their readers will. 
Description, explanation and practical precepts for the control 
of fear should, so far as may be, replace the vague single word 
by an objective account of actual responses. This I shall ti^ 
to do. 

The more easily observable responses are : — 
Withdrawal of attention from everything save the excit- 
ing situation 



FOOD GETTING, PROTECTIVE RESPONSES^ ANGER 59 

Running from the exciting object 

Running to cover 

Running to a familiar human animal 

Crouching under something 

Crouching behind something 

Clutching 

Clinging 

Nestling 

Starting — /. e., a sudden tension of the muscles in general 

Remaining stock-still, semi-paralyzed 

Falling down 

A screaming cry- 
Turning the head 

Covering the head 

Covering the eyes 

Shuddering 

Shivering 

Trembling 

Opening the mouth wide 

Opening the eyes wide 

Raising the eyebrows 

Temporary cessation of breathing 

Temporary cessation of heart-beat 

Acceleration of breathing 

Acceleration of heart-beat 

Increased intensity of heart-beat 

Difficulty in breathing and paleness, due to the contraction 
of the smooth muscles of the lungs and of the small arteries in 
the skin 

Sweating * 

Diminished action of the salivary glands 

Erection of the hair 

Less easily observable, and as yet undefined, responses ?.re 
the changes within the nervous system that produce the sub- 
jective features* whereby a man could report that he had) 

*Some of the experts in telling what a man's conscious states are 



6o 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



felt fear, though he had no knowledge that he had responded 
in any of the ways hitherto listed. 

The antagonistic or exclusive responses in the above list 
may occur in response to the same situation, but in sequence. 
Thus one may remain stock-still for a moment, then run and 
then crouch behind something; or may have the heart stop and 
then beat faster and harder. 

The clutching, clinging and nestling are, as might be ex- 
pected, specially prominent in early infancy, but persist to 
some degree throughout life. Running to a familiar human 
animal and a screaming cry are also relatively more prominent 
in infancy and early childhood, but also persist. 

It is obvious that not all of these responses will be made 
to any one situation on any one occasion, though a sufficiently 
exciting stimulus will bring forth a majority of them. If 
Aeneas "stood stock-still, his hair bristled, his voice stuck in 
his throat," he doubtless also shuddered, grew pale, opened 
wide his eyes and mouth, raised his eyebrows. He may have 
displayed many more of these responses. 

What now are the situations which originally provoke 
these responses severally or certain common combinations of 
them? It must be at once confessed that we do not know, 
for if we did we should not find three competent students of 
human nature reporting, — one that "fears of thunder . . . 
reptiles and insects are probably merely transmitted from one 
generation to another by social heredity" (by which is meant 
not heredity at all, but its opposite — education) and that 
"probably the only specialized fear that is instinctive is that 
excited by the danger-call of parents" [Kirkpatrick, '03, pp. 
103 and loi] ; another that by our original organization, 
^'Strange men, and strange animals, either large or small, ex- 
made of would compound the subjective features of fear out of the sights, 
sounds, etc., from the situation, plus unpleasantness ; others would add to 
the sensations and unpleasantness, a feeling of tension ; others would add 
further a feeling of depression (or possibly of excitement). It is not 
necessary to our purpose to decide between the rival theories of the inner 
aspect of fear. 



FOOD GETTING, PROTECTIVE RESPONSES, ANGER 6l 

cite fear, but especially men or animals advancing toward us in 
a threatening way. . . . The great source of terror to in- 
fancy is solitude. . . . Black things, and especially dark 
places, holes, caverns, etc., arouse a peculiarly gruesome fear. 
... A human corpse seems normally to produce an in- 
stinctive dread" [James, '93, vol. 2, pp. 417-420, passim] ; 
and another [McDougall, '08, p. 49] that what we respond 
to by flight is "danger !" 

Thunder and lightning, reptiles, wild and domestic ani- 
mals,* darkness, and strange persons were most frequently 
reported as the objects of fear in response to Stanley Hall's 
questions ['97]. These five covered over a third of all the 
reports, numbering 603, 483, 474, 432 and 436 out of the 
total of 6456. Fire, death, disease and robbers, which, on 
grounds of learning alone, should probably be more feared than 
the five mentioned, were reported only 365, 299, 241 and 153 
times. Moreover the fear in the latter case is far more often 
the response of dread or anxiety or mere precaution lest the 
house catch fire, lest one die or become ill, lest thieves break 
in and steal, the situations being other than fire, death, disease 
or robbery themselves. In the former case, the fear reported 
is the thoroughgoing agitation when in presence of the object 
itself. Miss Miles ['95] asked a hundred students and teach- 
ers at Wellesley College, "What things were you afraid of as a 
child?" getting replies as follows: — "31 feared darkness; 31 
feared animals. Dogs and cows were mentioned most often 
. . . ; 24 feared (or felt repulsion toward) snakes, spiders, 
worms, mice, cats, etc. ; 18 feared human beings — drunken, 
dead, insane, strange, tramps and rude boys ; 9 feared imag- 
inary evils." Robinson, who reports actual experiments, is con- 
vinced of the originality of fear at the approach of a large, 
noisy, shaggy object. He writes : — 

"In connection with this subject we m.ay consider the re- 
markable terror which is exhibited by most children of under 
two years old on seeing anything which resembles a wild 

*Not including, apparently, insects or rats and mice, which were re- 
ported 203 and 196 times. 



62 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

beast. This is quite independent of the most elementary- 
knowledge of natural history, and still more so of any acquired 
information as to possible danger from such a source. I have 
experimented on my own little ones, and on others, in order 
to find out what crawling shape they deemed most frightful. 
This, I thought, might give one a hint of the most prevalent 
source of danger to children in that prehistoric epoch during 
which human nature was being slowly shaped and moulded out 
of the beast-nature of The Thing of the Tree. My modus 
operandi consisted of covering myself (always in full sight 
of the child) wath a shaggy skin, and then imitating the actions 
and voices of various dangerous creatures such as the wolf, 
lion, bear, or dog. These experiments were followed up by 
showing the children the stuffed specimens of such beasts 
in the Kensington Natural History Museum. Although they 
had no knowledge, either practical or otherwise, of the formid- 
able character of animals of such a kind (and also in spite of 
the fact that the fraud was a patent one), the children all 
exhibited great agitation and distress whenever the pseudo 
bear or wolf drew near; so much so, in fact, that the 'new 
game' had to be speedily relinquished in most instances." 
['94, p. 476 f.] 

Sully ['96] thinks that the "facts are strongly opposed to 
the theory of an inherited fear of animals" [p. 209] and 
that "it is by no means certain that" the fear of being alone 
in the dark is instinctive, [p. 212] But the evidence which 
he summons hardly justifies the first of these statements and 
leaves the main arguments in favor of an instinctive response 
to loneliness and the dark undisturbed. 

OiljLhe_\¥hQle,,.jt.,s£ema -likely that an uiilearne.d tendency 
exists^ to respond by the physical and mental condition known 
as fear to the situations, 'thunder-storm,'* 'reptiles,' 'large ani- 
mals approaching one,' 'certain vermin,' 'darkness' and 'strange 
persons of unfriendly mien.' 

It is highly probable also that some noises, other than 
thunder, excite some of the responses on our list. McDougall, 

*Mr. H. M. Stanley ['98] has suggested that the essential feature of 
the situation is not the flash or noise, but the electro-magnetic disturbance 
itself. 



FOOD GETTING, PROTECTIVE RESPONSES, ANGER 63 

who is in general very timid about stating any concrete par- 
ticulars that originally excite fear, admits that "in most young 
children unmistakable fear is provoked by any sudden loud noise 
. . . and all through life such noise remains for many of us 
the surest and most frequent excitant" (of fear). ['08, p. 51.] 
It is indeed the case that, in the biographies of infants, noises 
and strange persons are more frequently mentioned as the situa- 
tions causing fear than are all other objects together.* This 
extreme emphasis is, however, in large measure due to the 
fact that modern civilized life produces many harsh, piercing 
and sudden noises, and eliminates wild animals. 

We may ask further whether certain particular qualities of 
noise do not have a fear-exciting effect beyond that of their 
suddenness and intensity. Does, for instance, an equally loud 
and sudden merry 'Hello' excite the same response as a dog's 
growl or the wind's howl ? I think not, but am unable to give 
important evidence of the specialized effects of equally sudden 
and loud noises. 

'The great source of terror to infancy is solitude,' says 
James, and many of us can testify to the existence of, at least, 
a greater readiness to be frightened by other features of a sit- 
uation when solitude is one feature, and to the apparent un- 
learnedness of this tendency. On the other hand, it will be 
argued that experience is adequate, since so large a portion 
of the sufferings of life come upon a child when he is alone. 
It is then that he falls out of his crib, is attacked by dogs or 
other children, and the like ; and, when we are older, it is then 
that fancy conjures up possible dangers and miseries. 

These contra-argnments are weaker than they seem. In- 
fants who are fed with absolute regularity, and who are never 
left alone in circumstances which permit injury from loneli- 
ness, nevertheless will, when they are alone, start and scream 
at objects and events that would cause no such response in 
the mother's presence. Many observers who deny that soli- 

*See Preyer ['82], Perez ['881, Moore ['96], Shinn [99]. Hall ['96, '97]. 
See also Gard ['08] on strange sounds as a cause of shock. 



64 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

tude provokes fear would agree that the mother's presence 
lessens it. But that is really to assert the same thing. The 
sensitiveness of imagination to frightening ideas in solitude is a 
result rather than a cause of fear. Being alone, we grow fear- 
some; growing fearsome, we think of events in harmony with 
our fearsomeness. 

What Kirkpatrick, who denies specialized instinctive fears, 
says of darkness may be said of solitude also — that it "is a 
condition in which fear may readily be excited." ['03, p. loi.] 
But this is to admit that solitude does have a tendency to pro- 
duce the fear responses. What causes any response to a total 
situation, is that much of the situation, which, if altered, alters 
the response. If a man has a stronger original tendency to 
tremble, and the like, when the wind howls around him in his 
loneliness than when he hears the same howling in company, 
then the loneliness as well as the howling is fear-producing. 

In all such cases — of fear or of any other responses — it is 
unscientific to draw a sharp line between the major, or more 
essential, and the minor, or less essential, features of a situa- 
tion. Darkness, solitude and suddenness should be thought of 
ultimately just as thunder or reptiles. To state that we respond 
by X to thunder, responding more vigorously or surely when 
alone, is to state absolutely the same fact as that we respond by 
X to loneliness, responding to it more vigorously or surely 
when there is thunder. Absolutely the same fact may be de- 
scribed truthfully by saying that we fear X, fearing it more 
when Y also occurs; or that we fear Y, fearing it more when 
X also occurs. 

I do not think that the situation of being on a high place, 
as a bridge, tree-top or precipice edge, provokes by original 
nature any characteristic complex of the responses of our list. 
In Stanley Hall's replies, the disagreeableness of the situation 
seems to be due oftenest to intellectual apprehensions — first, 
that one may give way to the 'impulse to jump off,' and second 
that something may give way. The 'impulse to jump off' is 
utterly unlike *fear at being there,' and the idea that something 



FOOD GETTING PROTECTIVE RESPONSES, ANGER 65 

may give way is a product of training. Children have to be 
vigorously cautioned against climbing trees, going too near 
edges and the like; the passion for being up in the air as in 
swings, on hilltops and the like, is very strong; the modern 
building-trades seem free from any considerable handicap, in 
spite of the dizzy perching which they involve; finally, the 
actual sensations of those who go up in the air in ships 
seem charming rather than frightful. 

What James calls 'fear of the supernatural' ['93, p. 419] 
and what McDougall refers to in saying that "in some of the 
more timid creatures it would seem that every unfamiliar sound 
or sight is capable of exciting fear" ['08, p. 51], offer interest- 
ing .problems for analysis. Strangeness of certain sorts, for ex- 
ample, the 'vertiginous baffling of the expectation,' certainly 
provokes the fear responses. Strangeness of other sorts or in 
other contexts provokes a mere caution ; of other sorts, curious 
examination; of other sorts, delighted contemplation; of other 
sorts, indifference. Which sorts in which circumstances pro- 
duce which responses — nobody has dared to state. Daily life 
offers amusing proofs of our ignorance. The parent buys a 
toy, prophesying that its novelty will lead to delighted con- 
templation, but finds that it produces 'turning the head away, 
clinging, trembling and screaming.' The teacher shows a rare 
specimen to secure curious examination, but gets only indif- 
ference. The practical joker with elaborate care arranges an 
exhibit to excite paralysis and flight, but his young brother 
only cautiously approaches and demolishes it. 

I may venture a few suggestions to aid in solving this 
question, though we must in the end rely upon special observa- 
tions and experiments. First, strangeness per se causes shock. 
The amount of shock will depend in part on the amount of 
strangeness, and in part on the condition of the person. What 
gives the mild shock of surprise in health may give the grave 
shock of fear in illness. The amount of shock will also de- 
pend in part on the kind of strangeness. Strange men and 
animals (and moving objects, it may be added) more often 

5 



66 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

provoke fear, strange tastes and smells more often provoke 
mere discomfort, strange motionless objects, such as toys, flow- 
ers or furniture, more often curiosity. 

It is strange that there should be in the literature on fear 
no emphatic mention of the power of 'being suddenly brushed 
or clutched' to arouse the fear responses, especially in women 
and children, I venture to assert that nine-tenths of females 
(and of males under 15) when they were alone in the dark 
would, if something brushed by them or gripped throat, arm 
or leg, show pronounced responses, in spite of the fact that no 
harm had ever been done them as the result of similar sensa- 
tions. In older males the fear responses might persist, or be 
mixed with, or give way to, those of fighting. 

Since the responses and the situations provoking them 
which are involved in what men call instinctive fear are both 
so numerous, there should be, in an account of original nature, 
a section telling just which of the responses are bound to each 
of the situations, and how firmly. As yet this has not been 
done, or even attempted. 

Surely, however, the sciences of human nature cannot rest 
content with the fact that by original nature strange men 
and animals advancing toward us with threatening mien, 
thunder and lightning, reptiles, darkness, solitude, dark holes 
and corners, rats, spiders and other creeping things, sudden 
noises, contacts and clutches unprepared for tend to produce 
more or less an indeterminate assortment of discomfort, run- 
ning, crouching, screaming, clinging, trembling, and so on. 
They need to know just what the effect of each of these situa;- 
tion-elements is. Practically, it makes a great difference 
whether a man responds only with discomfort, palpitations and 
the inner subjective fear, still shooting at the enemy, or also 
runs and hides. Theoretically, it makes a great difference 
whether the situations involved are regarded as producing in- 
discriminately a vague X, fear, which then may at random 
produce any assortment of its various 'expressions,' or are 



FOOD GETTING^ PROTECTIVE RESPONSES, ANGER 67 

regarded as each producing-, under the same conditions, an 
effect proper to it and to nothing but it. In the latter case we 
are encouraged to study the exact details of human behavior 
in fear, tho we may never know them, while in the former 
case we are told beforehand that they are unknowable. 

As a sample of such inquiries, let us ask whether each of the 
situations tends equally to provoke each of the responses and 
in the same degree, so that one or another, or one after another, 
and more or less of it, will come according to accidental physio- 
logical conditions in the animal. Surely not. The 'fear' due 
to a large animal coming toward one rapidly is not the 
same as the 'fear' due to thunder and lightning. The large 
animal is much more likely to be responded to by running than 
by hiding. With thunder and lightning the reverse is true. 
Still surer is the specialization of the intensity of the response. 
One can vary the amount of a child's 'starting' from a con- 
traction hardly perceptible up to one approaching a convulsion, 
by varying the stimulus. Can anyone doubt that each degree 
of loneliness or suddenness has a determinate effect? 

Consider the specialized effects of solitude, of sounds com- 
pared with sights, and of seeing a large animal approaching 
one rapidly compared with grasping a cold clammy reptile. 
In my opinion at least, the clutching, clinging and nestling re- 
sponses are relatively rare in solitude, tho occasionally a 
human being, so frightened, will clutch at trees or even at 
nothing. Fearful sounds rarely provoke turning the head 
away and covering the eyes, but fearful sights often do. A 
large animal approaching one rapidly and distant, say, forty 
feet, is often responded to by turning and running, but very 
rarely by jumping backwards. The reverse is true of the 
response to the same animal met suddenly at a distance of three 
feet, or to a clutch (from in front) in the dark. 

It is probable further that an impartial survey of human 
behavior, unprejudiced by the superstition that a magic state 
of consciousness, 'fear,' is aroused by 'danger,' and then creates 
flight and other symptoms of itself, would show that pursuit 



68 THE ORIQINAL NATURE OF MAN 

and capture may produce distinctive responses whether or no 
the peculiar inner trepidation which introspection knows is 
present. A large object coming rapidly toward one seems often 
to provoke instinctive turning, fleeing, seeking cover (and the 
human horde, if that is present) without necessarily doing 
more. Being pounced on or grasped by a large object seems 
often to be responded to by instinctive dodging, writhing and 
pulling, without anything that deserves the name of the inner 
emotion of fear. 

FIGHTING 

Fighting and anger might be listed under the original 
tendencies of social intercourse, since the situations concerned 
are so often produced by other human beings. They might go 
under tendencies of gross bodily manipulation. They might 
go along with the peculiarly 'expressive' tendencies. They 
might, even more scientifically, be separated into different 
behavior-series and reported under several of our headings. I 
list them together and here simply as a matter of convenience 
to the student. 

Pugnacity and anger are usually coupled together (for 
example, by James ['93, vol. 2, p. 409 f.] and by McDougall 
['08, p. 59 f.] ) as the external and internal aspects of the same 
response. But the facts of original nature are hardly so simple. 
Pugnacious behavior or fighting and angry behavior are both 
complexes, which need to be analyzed and which are by no 
means proved to be inseparable in man's original equipment. 
There seem, indeed, to be at least six separable sets of connec- 
tions in the so-called 'fighting instinct.'* These are : — 

(i) To the situation, 'being interfered with in any bodily 
movements which the individual is impelled by its own con- 
stitution to make, the interference consisting in holding the 
individual/ the little child makes instinctively responses of 
stiffening, writhing and throwing back the head and shoulders. 

*There is a still different set or sets for the tendencies most usefully 
called instinctive anger. 



FOOD GETTING, PROTECTIVE RESPONSES, ANGER 69 

These are supplemented or replaced by kicking, pushing, slap- 
ping, scratching and biting in the older. This tendency, if it 
exists, may be called the instinct of escape from restraint. 

(2) To a similar situation, with the difference that the 
interference is by getting in the way or shoving, the responses 
are: — dodging around, pushing with hands or body, hitting, 
pulling and (though, I think, much less often) slapping, kick- 
ing and biting. This may be called the instinct of overcoming 
a moving obstacle. 

Parents who are scientific observers will admit the existence 
and unlearnedness of these two tendencies, and, I think, will by 
close observation find that they are fairly distinguishable one 
from the other, and both from the forms of anger and fighting 
whose description follows. The angry behavior in these two 
cases usually ceases when the confinement or obstruction ceases, 
and rarely leads to more violent behavior thereafter, whereas 
in some other cases it is maintained and may arouse the hunting 
instinct, teasing, bullying and cruelty after its own immediate 
end has been attained. 

(3) To the situation 'being seized, slapped, chased or bitten 
(by any object), the escape-movements having been ineffective 
or inhibited for any reason,' the fighting movements or the 
paralysis of terror may be the response. When the former 
occurs, the total complex may be called the instinct of counter- 
attack. 

To the particular situations that arise when attack provokes 
counter-attack, there are, I believe, particular responses. If 
A clings to B, trying to throw him down or bite him, B will, 
by original nature, more often try to push A away or throw him 
down than to hit or bite him. If A rushes at B, slapping, 
scratching and kicking, B will, by original nature, more often 
hit and kick at A than try to push him away or throw him 
down. I believe that there is a basis in original nature for the 
distinction in sport between the fight with fists, which I judge 
to be a refinement (inappropriate as the word may seem) of 



70 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

the *slap-scratch-poke' fighting, and the wrestHng match, which 
I judge to be a refinement of the 'push-pull-throw down-jump 
upon' fighting. When A and B are both down, the response 
is an effort to get on top. When A is beaten, it is originally- 
satisfying to B to sit on him (or it), to stand exulting beside 
him (or it), and to remain unsatisfied (if A is a human being) 
until A has given signs of general submissiveness. Many other 
specialized original tendencies, such as to remove things from 
different parts of the body in different ways, and to duck the 
head and lift up the arm, bent at the elbow, in response to the 
situation, *an object coming toward the head rapidly,' appear 
in the course of a fight. 

(4) To the situation 'sudden pain' the response is attack 
upon any moving object near at hand. This may be called 
the instinct of irrational response to pain. This fact, common 
in everyone's experience, may of course be interpreted as an 
acquired habit of response by analogy, but it seems to the writer 
that it is a true and beautiful case of nature's very vague, 
imperfect adaptations, which only on the whole and in a state 
of nature are useful. When a loving child with indigestion 
beats its mother who is trying to rock it to sleep (though it 
would protest still more if not rocked), or when a benevolent 
master punches the servant who is lifting his gouty foot, the 
contrary habits seem too strong to be overcome by the force of 
mere analogy with an acquired habit of hitting in response to 
the pain of conflict. Indeed the existence of the latter habit is 
in such cases only a matter of speculation. 

(5) To the situation, *an animal of the same species toward 
whom one has not taken the attitude of submission and who 
does not take it toward him' the human male responds by 
threatening movements, shoving the person away, and, if these 
fail to produce the attitude of submission, by either submission 
or further attack. The encounter is closed by the submission 
of either party, which may take place at any point. This 
tendency may be called the instinct of combat in rivalry. 

Dr. Ordahl ['08] has given some interesting evidence of 



FOOD GETTING,, TROTECTIVE RESPONSES^ ANGER 7I 

the prevalence of this tendency in mammals in general. The 
following' episode from Tom Sawyer may serve to clothe my 
abstract formulation in flesh and blOod : — 

"Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved — 
but only sidewise, in a circle ; they kept face to face and eye to 
eye all the time. Finally Tom said : 

"I can lick you !" 

"I'd like to see you try it." 

"Well, I can do it." 

"No, you can't either." 

"Yes I can." 

"No you can't." 

"I can." 

"You can't." 

"Can!" 

"Can't!" 

An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said : 

"What's your name?" 

" 'Tisn't any business of yours, maybe." 

"Well, I 'low I'll make it my business." 

"Well, why don't you?" 

"If you say much, I will." 

"Much — much — much. There now." 

"Oh, you think you're mighty smart, don't you? I could 
lick you with one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to." 

"Well, why don't you do it? You say you can do it." 

"Well, I will, if you fool with me." 

"Oh yes, — I've seen whole families in the same fix." 

"Smarty! You think you're some, now, don't you? Oh, 
what a hat!" 

"You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you 
to knock it off — and anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs." 

"You're a liar!" 

"You're another." 

"You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up." 

"Aw — take a walk!" 

"Say — if you give me much more of your sass I'll take and 
bounce a rock off'n your head." 

"Oh, of course you will." 

"Well, I will." 

"Well, why don't you do it then ? What do you keep say- 



72 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ing you will for? Why don't you do it? It's because you're 
afraid." 

"I ain't afraid." 

"You are." 

"I ain't." 

"You are." 

Another pause, and more eyeing and sidling around each 
other. Presently they were shoulder to shoulder. 

Tom said : 

"Get away from here!" 

"Go away yourself!" 

"I won't." 

"I won't either." 

So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, 
and both shoving with might and main, and glowering at each 
other with hate. But neither could get an advantage. After 
struggling till both were hot and flushed, each relaxed his 
strain with watchful caution, and Tom said : 

"You're a coward and a pup. I'll tell my big brother on 
you, and he can thrash you with his little finger, and I'll make 
him do it, too." 

"What do I care for your big brother ? I've got a brother 
that's bigger than he is — and what's more, he can throw him 
over that fence, too." (Both brothers were imaginary.) 

"That's a lie." 

"Your saying so don't make it so." 

Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said : 

"I dare you to step over that, and I'll lick you till you can't 
stand up. Anybody that'll take a dare will steal sheep." 

The new boy stepped over promptly, and said : 

"Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it." 

"Don't you crowd me now ; you better look out." 

"Well, you said you'd do it — why don't you do it?" 

"By jingo! for two cents I will do it." 

The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and 
held them out with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. 
In an instant both boys were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, 
gripped together like cats ; and for the space of a minute they 
tugged and tore at each other's hair and clothes, punched and 
scratched each other's noses, and covered themselves with dust 
and glory. Presently the confusion took form and through 



FOOD GETTING^ PROTECTIVE RESPONSES^ ANGER 73 

the fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, 
and pounding him with his fists. 

"Holler 'nuff!" said he. 

The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying, 
— mainly from rage. 

"Holler 'nuff!" — and the pounding went on. 

At last the stranger got out a smothered " 'nuff !" and Tom 
let him up and said : 

"Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fool- 
ing with next time." 

(6) To the situation, 'the mere presence of a male of the 
same species during acts of courtship,' the human m.ale tends to 
respond by threatening or attacking movements until the in- 
truder is driven away or the disturbed one himself flees. 

I am less confident of the existence of this than of any of 
the other specializations of the fighting tendency, but on the 
whole cannot conquer the suspicion that mere presence without 
other provocation does arouse resentment in other males en- 
gaged in courtship as it would not otherwise, and that the 
disappearance of the intruder rather than his submission is the 
satisfying condition in this case much more than in others. 

(7) Either as habits of analogy developing from these 
specialized tendencies, or as an equally original but vaguer 
tendency in addition to them, the following behavior occurs : — 

To the situation — being for some length of time thwarted 
in any instinctive response by any thing, especially if the thwart- 
ing continues after one has done various things to evade it, the 
response-g^roup of pushing, kicking, hitting, etc., is made, the 
attack continuing until the situation is so altered as to produce 
instinctively other responses, such as fulfilling the original 
activity, hunting, mangling, triumiphing over, or fleeing from, 
the thwarting thing. 

I shall not attempt to decide whether this general tendency 
to angry behavior of some sort at the persistent thwarting of 
any instinctive response is itself acquired or original, or to 
present evidence either way. It is probably v/isest for practical 
control to assume that it is original. McDougall assumes not 



74 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

only that it is original but that it is the only original tendency, 
that there is no difference in the response whether the one 
thwarted is trying to sit up, to run to a given point, to console 
an infant, to curiously examine a machine, to get food into his 
mouth, to win a submissive gaze from another boy, or to 
diminish pain, that what I have listed as six or more differ- 
entiated tendencies is one indistinguishable 'expression' of 
'anger.' A blow he says arouses angry behavior because "the 
impulse of self-assertion" is thwarted. ['08, p. 60.] The in- 
stinct of pugnacity, in his opinion, "has no specific object or 
objects. . . . The condition of its excitement is rather any 
opposition to the free exercise of any impulse, any obstruction 
to the activity to which the creature is impelled by any one of 
the other instincts. And its impulse is to break down any such 
obstruction and to destroy whatever offers this opposition." 
['08, p. 59 f.] 

Kirkpatrick says, somewhat more concretely, that "any- 
thing interfering with the child's activities or wishes" pro- 
duces "crying, turning away the head, pushing away an offend- 
ing object, . . . kicking and striking .... stamping with 
the feet or striking the head against the floor." ['03, p. 104.] 
Such behavior is possibly the foundation of all the later varia- 
tions. Perez ['82, p. 75] is right in maintaining that the 
beginnings of such behavior come very early in life, though 
perhaps not in the third month, as he states. 

The case of a child held against his will would then be 
typical of all pugnacious behavior. He first wriggles, pulls, 
turns, or drops to the floor; he then pushes, kicks, and strikes, 
progressing perhaps to biting, butting, and the miscellany of 
rage in case the thwarting continues. 

This inclusion of all varieties of angry behavior or fighting 
movements in one general tendency to respond to obstruction, 
and their description merely by their effect in breaking down 
the obstruction and destroying whatever offers it, I have tried 
to show is a too easy account of the facts. But it is a great 
step in advance of no definite statement at all as to what origin- 



FOOD GETTING^ PROTECTIVE RESPONSES^, ANGER 75 

ally makes man angry or what man originally does in that 
condition, 

Stanley Hall would criticize both it and my account as 
hopelessly inadequate to the rich variety of original nature, but 
would be, I think, misled by the emphasis put upon eccentricities 
rather than ordinary occurrences by his correspondents and 
their confusion of dislike and intolerance generally with 
pugnacity. 

The state of affairs, angry and pugnacious behavior, is 
apparently satisfying. Of course, some of the situations that 
provoke it are far from satisfying intrinsically, but the re- 
sponses made to them are, and often are enough so to make 
one rather seek than avoid the situation itself. The misery 
reported in connection with anger seems to be an after-effect, 
the accompaniment of shame, grief, or rational deprecation of 
one's past behavior, or of the exhaustion due to it. 

The flushing, snarling, flashing eyes, violent heart-beat and 
the less easily observable internal activities which we call the 
feeling of anger by no means always appear in response to the 
seven sets of situations listed above. The separation is clearest 
in defensive fighting, whose inner bodily accompaniments may 
be those of fear, but is observable elsewhere. Fighting in the 
strict sense and anger in the strict sense go together, not always 
and of necessity, because they are mystically born together in 
one instinct, but often and by the contingency that a situation 
is such as arouses fighting by one combination of its elements 
and anger by another combination. 

My description of instinctive fighting, I may add, Is confess- 
edly Imperfect. The truth will, when found, carry the reduc- 
tion of 'pugnacity' to much fuller detail, specifying just what 
sort of counter-blows, scratches, kicks, shoves, buttings and the 
like are connected with each concrete provocative element in 
the various attacks from and attitudes of objects. 



^6 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ANGER 

The older view was that a certain single state of -mind 
existed called 'anger' that this was aroused by many situations 
and that it expressed itself in many bodily responses. 

Stanley Hall ['99] mentions, as instinctive causes of anger 
in this sense, some thirty physical features, a score of peculiar 
acts, an equal number of features of dress, a multitude of habits, 
limitation of the subject's freedom, the thwarting of his expec- 
tation or purpose, contradiction, invasion or repression of his 
self, injuries to pride, injustice, causes of jealousy, and many 
special circumstances. The responses as described by Darwin 
are as follows : — 

"Rage. — I have already had occasion to treat of this emotion 
in the third chapter, when discussing the direct influence of the 
excited sensorium on the body, in combination with the effects 
of habitually associated actions. Rage exhibits itself in the 
most diversified manner. The heart and circulation are always 
affected ; the face reddens or becomes purple, with the veins on 
the forehead and neck distended. The reddening of the skin 
has been observed with the copper-coloured Indians of South 
America, and even, as it is said, on the white cicatrices left by 
old wounds on negroes. Monkeys also redden from passion. 
With one of my own infants, under four months old, I repeat- 
edly observed that the first symptom of an approaching passion 
was the rushing of the blood into his bare scalp. On the other 
hand, the action of the heart is sometimes so much impeded by 
great rage, that the countenance becom.es pallid or livid, and 
not a few men with heart-disease have dropped down dead 
under this powerful emotion. 

The respiration is likewise affected ; the chest heaves, and 
the dilated nostrils quiver. As Tennyson writes, "sharp 
breaths of anger puffed her fairy nostrils out." Hence we 
have such expressions as "breathing out vengeance," and "fum- 
ing with anger." 

The excited bram gives strength to the muscles, and at the 
same time energy to the will. The body is commonly held 
erect ready for instant action, but sometimes it is bent forward 
towards the offending person, with the limbs more or less rigid. 
The mouth is generally closed with firmness, showing fixed 



FOOD GETTING, PROTECTIVE RESPONSES^ ANGER y"] 

determination and the teeth are clenched or ground together. 
Such gestures as the raising of the arms, with the fists clenched, 
as if to strike the offender, are common. Few men in a great 
passion, and telling someone to begone, can resist acting as if 
they intended to strike or push the man violently away. The 
desire, indeed, to strike often becomes so intolerably strong, 
that inanimate objects are struck or dashed to the ground ; but 
the gestures frequently become altogether purposeless or 
frantic. Young children, when in a violent rage roll on the 
ground on their backs or bellies, screaming, kicking, scratching, 
or biting everything within reach. So it is, as I hear from Mr. 
Scott, with Hindoo children ; and as we have seen, with the 
young of the anthropomorphous apes. 

But the muscular system is often affected in a wholly dif- 
ferent way ; for trembling is a frequent consequence of extreme 
rage. The paralyzed lips then refuse to obey the will, "and 
the voice sticks in the throat;" or it is rendered loud, harsh, 
and discordant. If there be much and rapid speaking, the 
mouth froths. The hair sometimes bristles ; but I shall return 
to the subject in another chapter, when I treat of the mingled 
emotions of rage and terror. There is in most cases a strongly- 
marked frown on the forehead ; for this follows from the sense 
of anything displeasing or difficult, together with concentration 
of mind. But sometimes the brow, instead of being much 
contracted and lowered, remains smooth, with the glaring eyes 
kept widely open. The eyes are always bright, or may, as 
Homer expresses it, glisten with fire. They are sometimes 
bloodshot, and are said to protrude from their sockets — the 
result, no doubt, of the head being gorged with blood, as shown 
by the veins being distended. According to Gratiolet, the 
pupils are always contracted in rage, and I hear from Dr. 
Crichton Browne that this is the case in the fierce delirium of 
meningitis ; but the movements of the iris under the influence 
of the different emotions is a very obscure subject. . . . 

Shakespeare sums up the chief characteristics of rage as 
follows : — 

"In peace there's nothing so becomes a man, 
As modest stillness and humility; 
But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
Then imitate the action of the tiger : 
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. 
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; 



78 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide, 
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 
To his full height! On, on, you noblest English." 

Henry V., Act HI. sc i. 

The lips are sometimes protruded during rage in a manner, 
the meaning of which I do not understand, unless it depends 
on our descent from some ape-like animal. Instances have been 
observed, not only with Europeans, but with the Australians 
and Hindoos. The lips, however, are much more commonly- 
retracted, the grinning or clenched teeth being thus exposed. 
This has been noticed by almost everyone who has written on 
expression. The appearance is as if the teeth were uncovered, 
ready for seizing or tearing an enemy, though there may be no 
intention of acting in this manner. Mr, Dyson Lacy has seen 
this grinning expression with the Australians, when quarrelling, 
and so has Gaika with the Kaffirs of South America. Dickens, 
in speaking of an atrocious murderer who had just been 
caught, and was surrounded by a furious mob, describes "the 
people as jumping up one behind another, snarling with their 
teeth, and making at him like wild beasts." Everyone who has 
had much to do with young children must have seen how 
naturally they take to biting, when in a passion. It seems 
as instinctive in them as in young crocodiles, who snap their 
little jaws as soon as they emerge from the tgg." ['72, pp. 
238-242.] 

We may add, as very probably instinctive, the flow of tears, 
spitting,* yelling, scratching, kicking and slapping, by adults as 
well as children, pulling, shaking the objects attended to at the 
time, stamping, jumping up and down, and hitting with the 
hand. 

The way man originally feels as he responds to the appro- 
priate situations by escaping restraint, overcoming a moving 
obstacle, counter-attack, irrational response to pain, combat in 
rivalry, expelling intruders, and in struggling against thwarting 
in general, I shall not attempt to describe in the conventional 
way. 

That there is some common likeness in the internal responses 

*.See Schneider ['80, p. 225 ff.] for descriptions of this and some other 
forms of angry behavior and their homologues in the mammals in general. 



FOOD GETTING, PROTECTIVE RESPONSES, ANGER 79 

of man's neurones to the various so-called anger-provoking 
situations, and consequently in the man's feelings, is indubitable. 
Just as there is an identical element in the internal responses of 
man's neurones to very intense sounds, whatever their pitch or 
timbre, whereby he in each case has a 'loudness' sensation, so 
there is some common feature in his internal cerebral responses 
to many different external situations, whereby he in each case 
has a resentment-anger-rage emotion. And just as we can, in 
more or less useful ways, describe the 'loudness,' as by con- 
trasting it with 'lowness' or comparing it with a bright light 
or heavy weight, so we can describe the inner, subjective 'anger' 
by its differences from love or its likeness to intense joy. But 
such descriptions are of little value. A more useful definition 
of the common element in angry feelings is 'the internal re- 
sponse of consciousness in a man which is provoked by such 
and such definahle conditions outside and inside him' just as 
the most useful description of 'loudness' is 'tJie internal response 
of consciousness in a man, ivJiich is provoked by a certain out- 
side condition — air vibrations of large amplitude in his neigh- 
borhood — and a certain inside condition — a normal ear and 
brain.' 

To the questions, 'How does a man originally feel as he 
responds to sound air vibrations of great amplitude ?' and 'How 
does a man originally feel as he responds to blows, intrusion, 
being thwarted and the like?' there is, in each case, ultimately 
no more useful answer than 'As he docs feci.' This answer 
may in some cases be reached indirectly by first analysing the 
situation into its elements, stating how he would feel in 
response to each element, and stating his total feeling as a 
resultant of the compound of elements; but, first or last, the 
essence of an objective, matter-of-fact 'description' of a purely 
mental state has to be the naming of the situation which pro- 
vokes it and the creature in whom it is provoked. 

An objective description of the condition in the neurones 
of the brain which parallels this common element of feeling 
would, of course, be of great value. We should, for example. 



8o THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

then see the mechanism whereby, in the course of training, such 
different situations as 'a blow in the face,' 'being stared at 
insolently,' 'having one's hat blow off,' 'hearing a pupil say "He 
ain't," ' and 'seeing a badly-painted picture,' all arouse similar 
responses. For such an objective description knowledge is 
lacking. 

What I have written concerning the common conscious 
element of angry behavior applies equally to the conscious 
elements of fear, affection, self-assertion and all the other 
instinctive emotions. Henceforth, then, I shall dispense with 
statements about such conscious elements and about the 
hidden, internal, neural responses which parallel them. Cer- 
tain general problems concerning them will be reviewed in 
Chapter XI. 



CHArTER VII 

Responses to the Behavior of Other Human Beings 
motherly behavior 

Human intercourse and institutions are as surel}^ rooted and 
grounded in original nature as man's struggles with the rest of 
nature for food and safety. The first, and all in all the great- 
est, social bond and condition is the original behavior of mother 
to young. 

All women possess originally, from early childhood to 
death, some interest in human babies, and a responsiveness to 
the instinctive looks, calls, gestures and cries of infancy and 
childhood, being satisfied by childish gurglings, smiles and 
affectionate gestures, and moved to instinctive comforting acts 
by childish signs of pain, grief and misery. Brutal habits may 
destroy, or competing habits overgrow, or the lack of exercise 
weaken, these tendencies, but they are none the less as original 
as any fact in human nature 

With the changes in the woman's nature and life that con- 
ception and child-birth bring, these tendencies gain new power 
and special attachments. To a woman who has given birth to 
a child, a baby to see and hold and suckle is perhaps the most 
potent satisfaction life can offer, its loss the cause of saddest 
yearning. To a woman who has given birth to a child, the 
baby she sees, holds and nurses appeals almost irresistibly when 
it gives the cry of hunger, pain or distress, the start of surprise, 
the scream of fear, the smiles of comfort, the cooing and gurg-- 
ling and shouting of vocal play. She cuddles it when it cries, 
smiles when it smiles, fondles and coos to it in turn. As the 
first human face it sees and turns to follow, as the familiar form 
which it nestles against in comfort and clutches in fear, she 
6 8i 



82 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

wins its tokens of affection. Wlien it later points at objects, 
she looks and shares its interest. And later still, every signal 
of joy, or grief, or pain by this being whom she has held and 
nursed and fondled, has its quick response. In all this, original 
nature is the prime mover and essential continuing force. 

This series of situations and responses constitutes the 
'maternal instinct' in its most typical form. But, as do all 
original tendencies, it acts somehow, though its ordinary situa- 
tions be complicated or deformed. To have given birth to a 
child, though ordinarily an enormous intensifier of maternal 
care, is not a sine qua non. The sequence may, though less 
surely, begin with holding and nursing. Similarly, suckling 
the child, though ordinarily an enormous intensifier of maternal 
care, may be absent but still leave the situation potent enough 
to arouse the later sequences. So childless women, who lack 
also the stimuli of care of early infancy, may yet manifest the 
later tendencies toward the children they adopt. 

The added stimuli of bearing and nursing children may 
occasionally decrease the general womanly benevolence and 
protectiveness toward children and all creatures and things 
that simulate the appeal of dependence on a mother's care. 
When they do so, it is by restricting the responses concerned to 
a particular object in a fetichistic way. But I am confident 
that in general motherhood increases general tenderness. 

Boys and men share more in the instinctive good will 
toward children than traditional opinion would admit, though 
the tendencies are not so strong, and the responses are different. 
Very weak in the specific tendencies to clasp and carry an infant 
(the proverbial distress and awkwardness of the male when 
an infant is thrust into his arms, as contrasted with the typical 
woman's 'Let me hold him,' is at bottom instinctive) and to 
fondle and prattle to it, and lacking also the special incitement 
of the tendency due to the inner changes of child-birth and 
lactation, they yet in their own way respond to many of its 
appeals. To offer a little child scraps of food and see it eat, 
to snatch it from peril by animals, and to smile approvingly at 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 83 

its more vigorous antics, seem to me to be truly original ten- 
dencies of the human male. Kirkpatrick notes ['03, p. 119] 
that children "seek the protection of any human being, if 
frightened by an animal." They usually get it. 

Ratzel, writing of primitive man, says : "Motherly love is so 
natural a sentiment that the modes of expressing it need no au- 
thentication ; but we often come across instances of tenderness 
on the father's part toward his offspring. No doubt there are 
cases of cruelty, but these are exceptions. All who have gone 
deeply into the question agree in praising the peaceful and 
kindly way in which those of one household live together 
among uncorrupted natural races." ['85-'88, Eng. transl. of 
'96, Vol. I, p. 122, from 2d German edition of '94-'95.] 

Westermarck says : "The parents' duty of taking care of 
their offspring is, in the first place, based on the sentiment of 
parental affection. That the maternal sentiment is universal in 
mankind is a fact too generally admitted to need demonstration ; 
not so the father's love of his children. Savage men are com- 
monly supposed to be very indifferent towards their offspring; 
but a detailed study of facts leads us to a different conclusion. 
It appears that, among the lower races, the paternal sentiment 
is hardly less universal than the maternal, although it is prob- 
ably never so strong and in many cases distinctly feeble. But 
more often it displays itself with considerable intensity even 
among the rudest savages. In the often-quoted case of the 
Patagonian chief who, in a moment of passion, dashed his 
little son with the utmost violence against the rocks because he 
let a basket of eggs which the father handed to him fall down, 
we have only an instance of savage impetuosity. The same 
father 'would, at any other time, have been the most daring, 
the most enduring, and the most self-devoted' in the support 
and defence of his child. Similarly the Central Australian 
natives, in fits of sudden passion, when hardly knowing what 
they do, sometimes treat a child with great severity; but as a 
rule, to which there are very few exceptions, they are kind and 
considerate to their children, the men as well as the women 
carrying them when they get tired on the march, and always 
seeing that they get a good share of any food. All authorities 
agree that the Australian Black is affectionate to his children. 
"From observation of various tribes in far distant parts of 
Australia," says Mr. Howitt, "I can assert confidently that love 



84 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

for their children is a marked feature in the aboriginal character. 
I cannot recollect having ever seen a parent beat or cruelly use 
a child; and a short road to the good will of the parent is, as 
amongst us, by noticing and admiring their children. No 
greater grief could be exhibited, by the fondest parents in the 
most civilised community at the death of some little child, 
than that which I have seen exhibited in an Australian native 
camp, not only by the immediate parents, but by the whole 
related group." Other representatives of the lowest savagery, 
as the Veddahs and Fuegians, are likewise described as tender 
parents. Though few people have acquired a worse reputation 
for cruelty than the Fijians, even the greatest censurer of their 
character admits that the exhibition of parental love among 
them "is sometimes such as to be worthy of admiration" ; 
whilst, according to another authority, "it is truly touching to 
see how parents are attached to their children." The Bangala 
of the Upper Congo, "swayed one moment by a thirst for blood 
and indulging in the most horrible orgies, . . . may yet the 
next be found approaching their homes looking forward with 
the liveliest interest to the caresses of their wives and children. 
Carver asserts that he never saw among any other people 
greater proof of parental or filial tenderness than among the 
North American Naudowessies. Among the Point Barrow 
Eskimo "the affection of parents for their children is extreme" ; 
and the same seems to be the case among the Eskimo in gen- 
eral. Concerning the Aleuts Veniaminof wrote long ago : — 
"The children are often well fed and satisfied, while the parents 
almost perish with hunger. The daintiest morsel, the best 
dress, is always kept for them." Mr. Hooper, again, found 
parental love nowhere more strongly exemplified than among 
the Chukchi ; "the natives absolutely dote upon their children." 
Innumerable facts might indeed be quoted to prove that 
parental affection is not a late product of civilisation, but a 
normal feature of the savage mind as it is known to us. 

When dealing with the origin of the altruistic sentiment 
we shall find reason to believe that paternal affection not only 
prevails among existing men, savage and civilised, but that it 
belonged to the human race from the very beginning." ['06, 
'08, vol. I, pp. 529-532-] 

Male thoughtlessness and brutality toward children, and 
whatever living being or thing makes a similar appeal, is due 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 85 

not to total absence of kindliness, but rather to the presence of 
the competing tendencies of the hunting instinct, which is as 
much stronger in men than in women as the maternal instinct 
is stronger in women than in men. 

Filial Behavior. — Original nature, careless of equity, pro- 
vides no filial instinct of return devotion. The nearest ap- 
proach to it is the tendency of the young to follow after, appeal 
to, and take a submissive attitude toward, certain of their own 
species. These responses the mother earns if she gets them 
at all. They more often attach themselves to an older brother 
or sister, to the less loving but more exciting father, or to a 
dominant playmate. Stable boys, policemen, the well-dressed 
teacher, or the female relative in a higher station of life, may 
rob the mother of the little that nature under better auspices 
might allow her. One must be a mother for motherhood's 
sake. Assurance of instinctive filial devotion would perhaps 
be better gained by the demands which a commanding behavior 
issues than by the sacrifices of motherly love. 

RESPONSES TO THE PRESENCE^ APPROVAL AND SCORN OF MEN 

Gre'gariousness. — Man responds to the absence of human 
beings by discomfort, and to their presence by a positive satis- 
faction. Kidd's statement about Kafir children holds true of 
man in general. In his games and work, too, "there is much 
that looks like sheer animal love for gregarious fellowship.'* 
['06, p. 298.]* To be alone is as James says ['93, vol. 2, p. 

*Kidd says elsewhere : "The black child is sociable from infancy, 
and it is very rare to find a boy or girl who loves to sit alone and to brood 
in silence, or to wander off in solitude. Occasionally a child seems 
devoid of social tendencies, and in that case a witch-doctor is sent for 
to cure the child. But if any definite anti-social tendencies were to mani- 
fest themselves, the child would find but scant leniency in his treatment; 
such a quality would be promptly squashed in the interests of the life of 
the clan. As a matter of fact it is rarely manifested except in those 
natives who have been in contact with civilization. According to Kafir 
thought non-sociability is one thing, which is but abnormal ; anti-sociability 
is quite another thing, for it is the vilest of evils, and is considered 



86 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

430] one of the greatest of evils for him, so that soHtary con- 
finement is regarded as a cruel torture. Restlessness and, I 
think, wandering about, are further original responses to isola- 
tion. The rich satisfaction of the presence of a single com- 
panion consists not only in allowing various desirable activities 
which need a fellowman as their stimulus, but also in the mere 
fact that he is there. Being one of a crowd adds new instinc- 
tive exhilarations, irrespective of any particular benefits the 
situation may be expected to produce. McDougall and James 
have both emphasized the part this tendency plays in our 
recreations. The former says : 

'Tn civilized communities we may see evidence of the oper- 
ation of this instinct on every hand. For all but a few excep- 
tional, and generally highly cultivated, persons the one essential 
condition of recreation is the being one of a crowd. The 
normal daily recreation of the population of our towns is to go 
out in the evening and to walk up and down the streets in 
which the throng is densest — the Strand, Oxford Street, or the 
Old Kent Road ; and the smallest occasion — a foreign prince 
driving to a railway station or a Lord Mayor's Show — will 
line the streets for hours with many thousands whose interest 
in the prince or the show alone would hardly lead them to take 
a dozen steps out of their way. On their few short holidays 
the working classes rush together from town and country alike 
to those resorts in which they are assured of the presence of a 
large mass of their fellows. It is the same instinct working 
on a slightly higher plane that brings tens of thousands to the 
cricket and football grounds on half-holidays. Crowds of this 
sort exert a great fascination and afford a more complete satis- 
faction to the gregarious instinct than the mere aimless aggre- 
gations of the streets, because all their members are simultan- 
eously concerned with the same objects, all are moved by the 
same emotions, all shout and applaud together. It would be 
absurd to suppose that it is merely the individuals' interest in 
the game that brings these huge crowds together. What 
proportion of the ten thousand witnesses of a football match 

monstrous. It is safe to say that sociability is one of the first qualities to 
be developed in a black child, and grows throughout life. The Kafir's 
love for the social life of the kraal is far stronger than even the under- 
graduate's love of the social life in the college courts." f'o6, p. IT9 f.] 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 87 

would Stand for an hour or more in the wind and rain, if each 
man were isolated from the rest of the crowd and saw only the 
players ? 

Even cultured minds are not immune to the fascination of 
the herd. Who has not felt it as he has stood at the Mansion 
House crossing or walked down Cheapside? How few prefer 
at nightfall the lonely Thames Embankment, full of mysterious 
poetry as the barges sweep slowly onward with the flood-tide, 
to the garish crowded Strand a hundred yards away! We 
cultivated persons usually say to ourselves, when we yield to 
this fascination, that we are taking an intelligent interest in 
the life of the people. But such intellectual interest plays but 
a small part, and beneath works the powerful impulse of this 
ancient instinct. 

The possession of this instinct, even in great strength, does 
not necessarily imply sociability of temperament. Many a 
man leads in London a most solitary, unsociable life, who yet 
would find it hard to live far away from the thronged city. 
Such men are like Mr. Galton's oxen, unsociable but gregarious : 
and they illustrate the fact that sociability, although it has the 
gregarious instinct at its foundation, is a more complex, more 
highly developed, tendency. As an element of this more com- 
plex tendency to sociability, the instinct largely determines the 
form of the recreations of even the cultured classes, and is the 
root of no small part of the pleasure we find in attendance at 
the theatre, at concerts, lectures, and all such entertainments. 
How much more satisfying is a good play if one sits in a well- 
filled theatre than if half the seats are empty ; especially if the 
house is unanimous and loud in the expression of its feelings ! 
[McDougall, '08, pp. 86-87.] 

James says of the universal human love of festivities, cere- 
monies and the like, ''There is another sort of human play, 
into which higher aesthetic feelings enter. I refer to that love 
of festivities, ceremonies, ordeals, etc., which seems to be 
universal in our species. The lowest savages have their dances, 
more or less formally conducted. The various religions have 
their solemn rites and exercises and civic and military power 
symbolize their grandeur by processions and celebrations of 
diverse sorts. We have our operas and parties and masquer- 
ades. An element common to all these ceremonial games, as 
they may be called, is the excitement of concerted action as one 
of an organized crowd. The same acts, performed with a 



88 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

crowd, seem to mean vastly more than when performed alone. 
A walk with the people on a holiday afternoon, an excursion to 
drink beer or coffee at a popular 'resort,' or an ordinary ball 
room, are examples of this. Not only are a\ e amused at seeing 
so many strangers, but there is a distinct stimulation at feeling 
our share in their collective life. The perception of them is 
the stimulus and our reaction upon it is our tendency to join 
them and do what they are doing and our unwillingness to be 
the first to leave off and go home alone." ['93, vol. 2, p. 428.] 

A similar argument could be made in the case of our reli- 
gious worship, the organization of schools, the preference of 
young women for factory labor over domestic service, and 
almost any other human activity. 

Responses of Attention to Human Beings. — Man has a 
special original interest in the behavior of other men. Doubt- 
less this, in infancy, is largely due to the mere variety in move- 
ment which human beings have in common with dogs, mechani- 
cal toys, the leaves of trees and the like. But it is hardly wholly 
due thereto. The human face is too early singled out from 
other objects and too constantly a controller of attention. 
Chamberlain hardly exaggerates when he says that "the face 
of its elders is the child's chart and compass in the first voyages 
of life." ['00, p. 189.] Evidence is found in the dift'erence 
between the sexes in respect to it. If measurements are taken 
of the strength of the interest in the intellectual and moral 
traits of people compared to the strength of the interest in the 
mechanical operations of things, women differ notably from 
men. It seems necessary, therefore, to admit that the specific 
form and features and characteristic behavior of man, as in 
smiling, crying, or jabbering, attract attention to him and what 
he does. 

Attention-getting. — There seems to be, though one cannot 
be sure, a real, though easily counteracted, tendency to respond 
to the presence of an inoft'ensive human being by approaching, 
gesticulating, calling, and general restless annoyance until he 
notices one. A man entering a room where another stands 
absorbed will often, in spite of the conventions of cityfied habits, 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 89 

feel a measurable irritation, walk past him, ring for a waiter, 
or the like, though he would not have felt and done so, had the 
room been empty. Children seem to act in this way irrespec- 
tive both of any acquired intention to win approval, and of the 
more aggressive behavior which we call self-assertiveness or 
display. 

Responses to Approving and to Scornful Behavior. — Toi 
the situation, 'intimate approval, as by smiles, pats, admission 
to companionship and the like, from one to whom he has the 
inner response of submissiveness,' and to the situation, 'hum.ble 
approval, as by admiring glances, from anybody,' man responds 
originally by great satisfaction. The withdrawal of approving 
intercourse by masters and looks of scorn and derision from 
anyone originally provoke a discomfort that may strengthen to 
utter wretchedness. 

The reader will understand that the approval and disap- 
proval which are thus satisfying and annoying to the natural 
man are far from identical, in either case, v/ith the behavior 
which proceeds from cultivated moral approbation and condem- 
nation. The sickly frown of a Sunday-school teacher at her 
scholar's mischief may be prepotently an attention to him rather 
than the others, may contain a semi-envious recognition of him 
as a force to be reckoned with, and may even reveal a lurking 
admiration for his deviltry. It then will be instinctively ac- 
cepted as approval. 

Darwin long ago noted the extraordinarily ill proportioned 
misery that comes from committing some blunder in society 
whereat people involuntarily 'look down' on one for an instant. 
Except for him, little attention has been paid to the originality 
of the hunger of man for tlie externals of admiration and the 
intolerability of objective scorn and derision. Yet these forces 
of approval and disapproval in a; ;ropriate form from those 
above and those below us in mastery-status, are and have been 
potent social controls. For exanrde the 'discipline' of a 
humane home or school today relies almost entirely upon such 
approval from above, and finds it even more effective than 



go THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

severe sensuous pains and deprivations. The elaborate para- 
phernalia and rites of fashion in clothes exist chiefly by virtue 
of their value as means of securing diffuse notice and approval. 
The primitive sex display is now a minor cause: women ob- 
viously dress for other women's eyes. Much the same is true 
of subservience to fashions in furniture, food, manners, morals 
and religion. The institution of tipping, which began per- 
haps in kindliness and was fostered by economic self-interest, 
is now well-nigh impregnable because no man is brave enough 
to withstand the scorn of a line of lackeys whom he heartily 
despises, or of a few onlookers whom he will never see again. 

Best of all illustrations of the potent craving for objective 
approval, perhaps, is offered by Veblen's brilliant analysis of 
the economic activities of the leisure class.* These he finds 
to be essentially vicarious consumption and conspicuous waste, 
or the maintenance of a useless retinue and public prodigality 
in order to show that you have more than you can use, and so 
to fix upon you the admiring glances of those who can afford 
to waste less or nothing at all. 

Responses by Approving and Scornful Behavior. — To mani- 
fest approving and disapproving behavior is as original a 
tendency as to be satisfied and annoyed by them. Smiles, 
respectful stares and encouraging shouts occur, I think, as 
instinctive responses to relief from hunger, rescue from fear, 
gorgeous display, instinctive acts of strength and daring, 
victory, and other impressive instinctive behavior that is harm- 
less to the onlooker. Similarly, frOwns, hoots and sneers seem 
bound as original responses to the observation of empty-handed- 
ness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect. 
As in the case of all original tendencies, such behavior is early 
complicated, and in the end much distorted, by training; but 
the resulting total cannot be explained by nurture alone. 

In this I may be wrong, for two very gifted students of the 
social instincts assert : — the one, that approval and disapproval 

*Thorstem Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, '99. 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 91 

as responses have no specific original roots [McDougall, '08, 
p. 217 f.] ; and the other, that responses to approving and 
disapproving facial expressions as situations are "apparently 
learned much as other things. . . . The child comes in time to 
associate the wrinkles that form a smile with pleasant experi- 
ences — fondling, coaxing, offering of playthings or of the bottle, 
and so on" [Cooley, '02, p. 64]. But Professor McDougall's 
opinion might be explained by the fact that, having in mind 
judgments of approval and disapproval of the sophisticated 
moral sort, and finding no two single primary emotions cor- 
responding to them, he assumes that there are no two original 
lines of behavior on the basis of which these judgments may 
later be formed. Now, the absence of primary emotions of 
approval and disapproval does not prevent the presence of 
original tendencies to scowl and smile beyond those explained 
by the instincts of pugnacity and maternal affection. Cooley's 
inference I simply cannot accept. He admits, as everyone must, 
that facial expressions are made instinctively; and that is one 
of the best of reasons for expecting them to be responded to 
instinctively. Also I doubt whether parents habitually smile 
at children when they give them food and toys and other 
indulgences ; they smile oftener when they do not have to give 
such, — when the infant placidly kicks up his legs, or smiles, or 
says ah-goo, or displays his repertory of tricks. Apart from 
probabilities my observations lead me to believe that, though 
secondary to the voice and to gross bodily attitudes and ges- 
tures, facial expressions instinctively made are instinctively 
responded to. Cooley, it may be added, might accept all of the 
account given here, save the use of facial expression. He him- 
self notes "as early as the fourth month a 'hurt' way of crying 
which seemed to indicate a sense of personal slight. It was 
quite different from the cry of pain or anger, but seemed about 
the same as the cry of fright. The slightest tone of reproof 
would produce it. On the other hand, if people took notice and 
laughed and encouraged she was hilarious." ['02, p. 116 f.] 



92 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

MASTERING AND SUBMISSWE BEHAVIOR 

There is, I believe, an original tendency to respond to 'the 
presence of a human being who notices one, but without approv- 
ing or submissive behavior' by holding the head up and a little 
forward, staring at him or not looking at him at all, or alter- 
nating staring and ignoring, doing whatever one is doing some- 
v/hat more rapidly and energetically and making displays of 
activity, and by satisfaction if the person looks on without 
interference or scorn. There is a further tendency to go up to 
such an unprotesting human being, increasing the erection and 
projection of the head, looking him in the eye, and perhaps 
nudging or shoving him. There is also an original tendency to 
feel satisfaction at the appearance and continuance of submis- 
sive behavior on the part of the human beings one meets. These 
tendencies we may call the instinct of attempt at mastery. Such 
behavior is much commoner in the male than in the female. In 
her the forward thrust of the head, the approach, displays of 
strength, nudging and shoving are also commonly replaced by 
facial expressions and other less gross movements. 

If the human being who answers these tendencies assumes 
a submissive behavior, in essence a lowering of head and 
shoulders, wavering glance, absence of all preparations for 
attack, general weakening of muscle tonus, and hesitancy in 
movement, the movements of attempt at mastery become modi- 
fied into attempts at the more obvious swagger, strut and glare 
of triumph. The submissive attitude may also provoke the 
master to protect the submissive one. If the human being pro- 
tests by thrusting his head up and out, glaring back, and not 
giving way to advance, the aggressor either becomes submissive 
or there is more or less of a conflict of looks, gestures, yells, or 
actual attacks, until, as was described under the fighting instinct, 
the submission of one or the exhaustion of both. 

There is an original tendency to respond to the situation, 
'the presence of a human being larger than oneself, of angry 
or mastering aspect,' and to blows and restraint, by submissive 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 93 

behavior. When weak from wounds, sickness or fatigue, the 
tendency is stronger. The man who is bigger, who can out- 
yell and outstare us, who can hit us without our hitting him, 
and who can keep us from moving, does originally extort a 
crestfallen, abashed physique and mind. Women in general 
are thus by original nature submissive to men in general. Sub- 
missive behavior is apparently not annoying when assumed as 
the instinctive response to its natural stimulus. Indeed, it is 
perhaps a common satisfier. 

Every human being thus tends by original nature to arrive 
at a status of mastery or submission toward every other human 
being, and even under the more intelligent customs of civilized 
life somewhat of the tendency persists in many men. 

The original behavior in mastery and submission, and in 
approving, disapproving, being approved and being scorned, 
derided and neglected, becomes very much complicated by dif- 
ferences in the sex of the person who is the situation, and in 
the sex and maturity of the person who is responding, by an 
increase in the number of persons who are the situation, and 
by the presence in the situation of elements provocative of 
curiosity, fear, anger, repugnance, the hunting instinct, kindli- 
ness, sexual attraction and coy behavior. My account of at- 
tempt at mastery, for instance, would be only partly true of any 
cases save those where the situation and the response were the 
behaviors of two males of about the same degree of physical 
maturity. Mastery and submission are fit illustrations of the 
universal fact that the many unit tendencies to respond to 
characteristic situations combine in elaborately complex totals. 
This fact makes the original social tendencies of man seem, at 
first sight, like a hopelessly unpredictable muddle of domineer- 
ing, subservience, notice, disregard, sex pursuit, aversion, show- 
ing off, shyness, fear, confidence, cruelty and kindness. It also 
makes such unit-tendencies as I have described under approval, 
scorn, mastery and submission seem abstract and schematic, 
as indeed, they are. 

Space is lacking in this book, and knowledge in its author, 



94 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

to trace in the bewildering complexes of human intercourse, 
the combined effect of the unit-tendencies which I have out- 
lined. We may be confident, however, that, did we know 
enough, we should find that whether a person will in a given 
case be shy, or indulge in display, or alternate between the two 
— whether he will domineer or plead in courtship — whether he 
will respond toward a given child by approval, domineering, 
bullying, protection, hunting or fondling — could in every case 
be prophesied from knowledge of the situation and of him. 

Two such problems may be taken as sample tasks. When, 
we may ask, will mere display or showing off, without further 
behavior toward mastery, be the response, and when will shy- 
ness ? Can we do better with these two problems than to note 
that display is characteristic of the male human being when 
attracted by a female, and that there is "a certain amount of 
purely instinctive perturbation and restraint due to the con- 
sciousness that we have become objects for other people's eyes" ? 
[James, '93, vol. 2, p. 432.] 

Display. — Consider what should happen to mastering be- 
havior in the male if the condition of the one responding, or of 
the situation to which he responds, possesses elements which 
inhibit the proud look and threatening approach. Will not the 
tendency appear in the mutilated form of display alone? Now, 
to be sexually attracted would, by arousing another form of 
approach in the responder, inhibit his threats. If the situation 
were not one human being but many, it would, by arousing 
readiness to retreat, have a similar effect. Again, if the situa- 
tion were a much more mature person, one larger and more 
impressive, but by his encouraging looks not provocative of 
submissive behavior, the tendency toward mastering behavior 
would be retained as display alone. The hypothesis that in- 
stinctive showing off is what is left of mastering behavior when 
certain parts of it are kept out seems likely, since it accounts so 
well for the three main sets of circumstances under which this 
mild form of self-assertion occurs. 

Shyness. — In the second problem, we are required to find 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 95 

out what original shyness is, as well as when it occurs. It 
seems to consist chiefly in hesitancy and restraint of movement 
(most easily noticed in speech), lowering of eyes, and averted 
face. I suggest, therefore, that it may be submissive behavior 
mintcs the gross bodily cringing, and the inner acceptance of 
subserviency, and that it occurs as what is left of the response 
of submissive behavior when the condition of the person re- 
sponding, or of the situation to which he responds, possesses 
elements which inhibit these. Thus, where a powerful and 
hostile crowd would provoke submission in toto, a mere crowd 
or a fairly friendly crowd provokes shyness, and the speaker 
simply cannot look at them quite squarely or speak naturally. 
Similarly, while a sufficiently domineering mistress may pro- 
voke submission in toto, the ordinary nice girl makes her ad- 
mirers simply shy. Similarly, the adult whose behavior, if 
fully masterful, would provoke submission in toto, by omitting 
certain features of his mastering behavior reduces its effect upon 
others to shyness. 

Instead of the various forms of original tendencies which 
have been here described under mastery, submission, responses 
to admiration and responses to scorn, McDougall would assume 
two tendencies, "The instincts of self-abasement (or subjection) 
and of self assertion (or self-display)" ['08, p. 62]. He 
says : — 

"The instinct of self-display is manifested by many of the 
higher social or gregarious animals, especially perhaps, though 
not only, at the time of mating. Perhaps among mammals the 
horse displays it most clearly. The muscles of all parts are 
strongly innervated, the creature holds himself erect, his neck 
is arched, his tail lifted, his motions become superfluously vigor- 
ous and extensive, he lifts his hoofs high in air, as he parades 
before the eyes of his fellows. . . . The instinct is essentially 
a social one, and is only brought into play by the presence of 
spectators. Such self -display is popularly recognized as imply- 
ing pride; we say *'How proud he looks!" ... It is this 
primary emotion which may be called positive self-feeling or 
elation, and which might well be called pride, if that word 
were not required to denote the sentiment of pride. In the 



96 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

simple form in which it is expressed by the self-display of 
animals, it does not necessarily imply self-consciousness. 

Many children clearly exhibit this instinct of self-display; 
before they can walk or talk the impulse finds its satisfaction in 
the admiring gaze and plaudits of the family circle as each new 
acquirement is practised; a little later it is still more clearly 
expressed by the frequently repeated command, "See me do 
this," or "See how well I can do so-and-so"; and for many a 
child half the delight of riding on a pony, or of wearing a new 
coat, consists in the satisfaction of this instinct, and vanishes 
if there be no spectators. A little later, with the growth of 
self-consciousness the instinct may find expression in the boast- 
ing and swaggering of boys, the vanity of girls 

The situation that more particularly excites this instinct is 
the presence of spectators to whom one feels oneself for any 
reason, or in any way, superior, and this is perhaps true in a 
modified sense of the animals. . . . 

As regards the emotion of subjection or negative self-feel- 
ing, we have the same grounds for regarding it as a primary 
emotion that accompanies the excitement of an instinctive 
disposition. The impulse of this instinct expresses itself in a 
slinking, crestfallen behaviour, a general diminution of muscu- 
lar tone, slow restricted movements, a hanging down of the 
head, and sidelong glances. . . . 

In children the expression of this emotion is often mistaken 
for that of fear; but the young child sitting on his mother's 
lap in perfect silence and with face averted, casting sidelong 
glances at a stranger, presents a picture very different from 
that of fear." ['08, pp. 62-65, passim.] 

These tendencies, if taken as named, are too vague to be of 
much help in prophesying human behavior, while the detailed 
descriptions of them seem to me to fail to tell what makes us 
abashed and assertive. I quote them so that the reader may 
have a stimulus toward criticism of the view which I have been 
defending.* 

*See also, for a general description of certain aspects of the behavior 

in question, complicated bj' training, Showing off and Bashfnlncss as 

Forms of Self -Consciousness, by G. S. Hall and T. L. Smith ['03]. in 
the Ped. Sem. Vol. 10, pp. 159-109. 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 97 

*Self Conscious' Behavior. — The alterHations of shy and 
assertive behavior shown by Httle children toward visitors, by 
young people tov/ard the opposite sex, and by all of us upon 
occasions, are at times due to a balancing of the responses -in 
the case of one same situation which arouses neither especially, 
now one and now the other set of responses being made accord- 
ing to minor variations in the responder. They are at times 
due, I think, to actual changes back and forth in the behavior 
of the person who is the situation. 

There may well be in addition special tendencies to respond 
to a human being who gives one no notice by various forms of 
aggressive and coy display. I am unable to decide whether the 
lessons of experience that various antics, showing one's posses- 
sions, nestling up to or tugging at the person in question and 
the like get attention to oneself are or are not adequate to ex- 
plain the features of 'showing off' and 'attracting notice' which 
are left over after curiosity, attention-getting, 'mutilated mas- 
tery,' sex-behavior and general sociability have been reckoned 
with. 

Galton ['83, pp. 47-57] describes somewhat vaguely certain 
tendencies, which lie calls 'slavish instincts,' 'incapacity of 
relying on oneself and a faith in others,' and the like, and which 
he thinks 'have been ingrained into our breed' and 'are a bar 
to our enjoying the freedom which the forms of modern civiliza- 
tion are otherwise capable of giving us.' If I understood the 
facts which he has in mind, they seem to be certain aspects and 
results of the tendencies which have already been listed here 
under gregariousness, approval and submission, when com- 
bined with a relative lack of originality and of power in abstract 
thought. 

OTHER SOCIAL INSTINCTS 

Sex BeJmvior. — To disentangle what is original in sex pas- 
sion and the manifold activities of courtship and love from 
what is learned as custom, or produced by cross influences from 
other social habits, is a necessary preliminary to any complete 

7 



98 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

theory of education. But the task demands a volume of its 
own in which the facts of mental pathology and of the sex life 
of many races as well as those hidden by modern taboos can be 
presented with the frankness which so important a subject 
deserves. The reader is referred to A. Forel's The Sexual 
Question and A. Moll's The Sexual Life of the Child as per- 
haps the most useful books in English. 

The main chain of situations and responses originally in- 
volved is as follows : To the situation, 'a certain period of life 
and, in the male, a certain interval since the last discharge of 
spermatozoa,' the response is a restlessness and attentiveness to 
human beings o'f the opposite sex who do not arouse inhibiting 
responses of disgust. To man in this situation the presence of 
a not too young or old person of the opposite sex arouses the 
responses of display, aggressive in the male, coy in the female. 
To the total situations resultmg, the female responds by coy 
advances and retreats; the male, by caressing pursuit and 
capture. The former is satisfied by, and so instinctively 
maintains, whatever augments the aggressiveness of the male; 
he responds similarly to the hopeful difficulties which her be- 
havior offers. Capture and submission are responded to by 
mutual absence of fear, disdain and the like, — the mstinctive 
basis of the perfect confidence celebrated by poets, — and by sat- 
isfaction in bodily contact, including as a final element the con- 
tact necessary to the fertilization of the ovum. The entire 
behavior in original nature is neither licentious nor ideal, being 
destitute of images or notions of any sort. 

Secretiveness. — Secretiveness and confession, both popular 
in civilized mankind, seem to be so often inexplicable by train- 
ing that original tendencies to act in secret in some cases, and 
to get attention to one's self at all costs in others, may be sus- 
pected. But they are perhaps simply varieties of shyness and 
display. Secretiveness in the sense of a proclivity to conduct 
love affairs in isolation and in the dark is a special tendency 
that does seem to be unlearned. 

Rivalry. — No one can doubt that the facts vaguely referred 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 99 

to by Emulation or Rivalry have some basis in man's inborn 
organization ; but, as with maternal affection, pugnacity or the 
hunting instinct, it is necessary to define the tendencies and 
separate out those elements of them M^hich are original from 
those into which they grow in the course of man's social 
training. 

The two essential facts in rivalry are: the increased vigor 
in man's activity when other men are engaged in the same 
activity and the satisfyingness of superiority to them. It may 
be that in the course of life any sort of fellow-working or 
playing becomes a stimulus, and any sort of superiority a satis- 
fier. But original nature has no such desire for abstract super- 
iority, and its responses to fellow-working and playing are 
limited to the work and play which one's fellows instinctively 
pursue. Original emulation or rivalry is, in the first place, a 
group of tendencies to respond more vigorously in trying to get 
some one's attention upon perceiving a fellow creature's at- 
tempts to get it, in chasing some animal upon perceiving a 
fellow creature chasing it, in pulling toward one's self a thing 
when a fellow creature is pulling it toward himself, in running 
toward an object toward which he runs, and the like. In the 
second place, it is the responses of annoyance at being deprived 
of some one's attention by another, of satisfaction at getting 
some one's attention in spite of another, of annoyance at being 
outdone in the chase, the seizure or the struggle, of satisfaction 
in getting the prey, retaining the toy or being" on top in spite 
of competitors, and the like. 

It is upon such special stimulations and satisfactions rather 
than upon a diffuse imitativeness and craving for superiority 
that education at the start has to rely. As Dr. Ordahl, who 
has given the best single account of the facts of animal and 
human rivalry, says : "That it has become an instinctive response 
to all situations involving a possible chance of surpassing 
another, w^e have, I think, much evidence to show improbable. 
It is an instinctive response only when the situation involves 
the natural tendencies of the animal." ['08, p. 506.] 



lOO THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Quantitative estimates of the effect of rivalry are much 
needed. Triplett ['98] noted that the records for bicycle rid- 
ing made in competition averaged four and a half per cent (he 
gives this as three and a half by reason of an arithmetical error) 
faster than the same records made against time. He also tested 
forty children, mostly ten, eleven and twelve years old, in turn- 
ing a wheel, whereby a seen flag circled a track, with and with- 
out artificially arranged competition. In general the rate with 
human competition was two per cent faster. Triplett thinks 
that this slight superiority is a composite of a greater super- 
iority for some and an inferiority for others who became 
'nervous' and so 'went to pieces' under the excitement of 
competition. Triplett did not, however, attempt to assign any 
defined share of this effect to original rivalry as distinct from 
acquired habits. 

In the lower animals emulation is notably utilitarian. The 
victor gets the spoils. Dr. Ordahl notes that the young bird 
that calls oftenest and loudest does get the most food; that in 
cattle rivalry is chiefly over food and mates; that horses do 
not race in play; and that it is very difficult to teach dogs to 
race. This utilitarian quality holds true of original human 
rivalry to a greater degree than is generally thought to be the 
case. The presence of a competitor commonly does make it 
pay to put forth extra effort. In a society living by its instincts, 
the presence of a competitor would commonly make it pay to 
put forth extra effort, and to win would comm^only be to win 
some thing. 

Cooperation. — It is probable that certain modifications in 
the hunting responses occur when they are made in the com- 
pany of other men hunting the same thing; but what they are 
cannot be stated. So also one attacked when in the company 
of other men behaves otherwise than he would if alone; but, 
aside from the facts elsewhere noted and a tendency, under 
conditions which are not clearly made out, to huddle together, 
instead of scattering, I cannot say what the cooperative be- 
havior is. 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS lOl 

Suggestibility and Opposition. — Suggestibility seems to 
mean the tendency to believe without proof and to act without 
sufficient reason. Man obviously does not have to learn sug- 
gestibility in this sense. Indeed he spends much of his life in 
getting rid of it. But such behavior is a secondary conse- 
quence of tendencies already described or to be described, not 
a new set of bonds, requiring a separate place in our list. The 
same holds good, I think, of the instinctive basis of the ten- 
dencies to self-assertion which Royce emphasizes in the follow- 
ing words : "Side by side with the social processes of the 
imitative type appear another group of reactions practically 
inseparable from the former, but in character decidedly con- 
trasted with them. These are the phenomena of Social Oppo- 
sition and of the love for contrasting one's self with one's fel- 
lows in behavior, in opinion, or in power. These phenomena 
of social contrast and opposition have an unquestionably instinc- 
tive basis." ['03, p. 277.] 

Envious and Jealous Behavior. — It is an original tendency 
of man to be annoyed by the perception of another* receiving 
certain attention and treatment which his own behavior would 
otherwise get for himself. Young children are thus intolerant 
of the fondling of others by their mother ; lovers, of the atten- 
tiveness of their mates to others ; mothers, of the affection and 
notice given by their children to others. There seems, how- 
ever, to be no uniform behavior characteristic of these jealous 
discomforts. Attacks on the competing object, seizure and 
holding of the person whose attitude toward one is being made 
inadequate, general raging, sulking, pining, grief and other 
activities are manifested. The original basis of envy seems to 
be simply discomfort at seeing others approved, and at being 
outdone by them. 

Anyone with a special interest in the natural history of 
jealousy and envious behavior will find in Dr. A. L. Gesell's 
Jealousy [A. J. P., vol. 17, pp. 437-496] an account of the 

*The 'other' may be a thing or an event as well as a person. 



102 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

many acts and expressions which are commonly referred to by 
jealousy and envy. From this material the student can him- 
self decide what their roots in original nature are. 

Greed. — The elements out of which what is original in 
greed is composed have been listed elsewhere. To go for attrac- 
tive objects, to grab them when- within reach, to hold them 
against competitors, to fight the one who tries to take them 
away, to go for, grab and hold them all the more if another is 
trying to do so — these lines of conduct are the roots of greed. 
The word is, in common use, restricted to those manifestations 
in which what we consider a normal balance between these 
tendencies and more generous ones is exceeded. 

Ownership. — By the instinct of ownership may be meant 
either original tendencies to resist the abstraction from one's 
person or immediate neighborhood of an object which one is 
using or has recently (within a few minutes) acquired, or 
original tendencies to be satisfied by having on one's person 
or within the range of one's senses many objects with which no 
one interferes. The former have already been listed under the 
instinct of possession ; the latter are more doubtful. The vei*y 
common enjoyment of owning, that is, having complete power 
over, things rather than merely using them subject to possi- 
bilities of interference or despoiliation, no matter how remote, 
is the outgrowth of training cooperating with one or both of 
these tendencies. 

Kindliness.* — The situation, 'a living thing displaying 
hungry, frightened or pained behavior by wailing, clinging, 

*I use the word kindliness for parts of the tendencj' which James calls 
sympathy, including other parts under mothering behavior. The word 
sympathy has been used for very different traits in the service of quarrels 
about ethical theories and may well be avoided, even when, as here, 
the behavior named by it is stated objectively. It has meant benevolenit 
feelings, such as mothers have toward their children ; annoyance at the 
signs of suffering, such as a hard-hearted boarder might feel at a child's 
wailing or a sick man's groans ; and the duplication, in an observer, of 
any instinctive behavior — fear, anger, elation and the like — which he 
witnesses. This last variety will be treated in this inventory under 
Imitation. 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS I03 

holding out its arms and the like,' provokes attention and dis- 
comfort and may, if attendant circumstances do not shunt be- 
havior over to the hunting, avoiding or triumphing responses, 
provoke acts of rehef. Whether this last issue is a conse- 
quence of the original bonds described under the instinct of 
motherly behavior or is a somewhat independent and differently 
specialized kindliness, is of little importance for our purpose. 
The former is the likelier, but some odd facts suggest that 
specialized tendencies to share food and social protection with 
the suffering may have arisen as inborn qualities of the natures 
of certain social animals. The commonest bodily conditions 
due to pity, as reported by Saunders and Hall ['oo], are loss 
of appetite and inability to sleep! The irrational impulse to 
get the sick to eat seems to prevail the world over ; and watch- 
ing over them is often a custom justified now more by its satis- 
faction of the impulses in the watcher than by its value to the 
watched. In man's life, for the first nine-tenths of his history, 
a tendency to feed and watch by those who were sick, wounded 
and afflicted with sores would have perhaps been a form of 
mutual aid advantageous to the group's survival and one that 
could conceivably have originated as a variation from motherly 
behavior. 

Another aspect of original kindliness is the positive satis- 
fyingness of witnessing behavior characteristic of welfare in 
our fellows. Even the mean and brutal man naturally likes, 
apart from periods of rage and hunting, to see people happ}'-. 
The happy behavior of others is pleasant, as flowers, sunshine 
and food are. It provokes, if competing responses are not too 
strong, kindly behavior in the shape of welcome, smiles, 
laughter, and the sharing of food. This kindly behavior is 
not necessarily confined to human beings; the child may offer 
a part of his cooky to a toy, or caress a flower. As Cooley 
says, "it flows out upon all the pleasantness the child finds 
about him." ['02, p. 47.] In an ordinary environment, how- 
ever, people are its main stimuli and recipients. 

Teasing, Tormenting and Bullying. — Teasing, tormenting 



I04 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

and bullying" are the most notable inborn exceptions to childish 
kindliness. They are due, I judge, to the competing tendencies 
to manipulation and curiosity, hunting, scorn and mastery. 
Manipulation and curiosity easily develop into teasing. A child 
tends to do all sorts of things to people as well as to things, and 
is restless at the quiescence of a person as he is at that of any 
object. If the person who is pulled, poked, hit, called to, run 
after or jumped upon plays back, the natural course of develop- 
ment is toward what is called play. If the person reacts by 
energetic and victorious angry behavior, the child abandons its 
manipulation and pleased interest in what the person will do 
in favor of fighting, flight or submissive appeal. If the person 
neither plays back nor punishes, but behaves in a vexed, sullen, 
frightened or insufficiently punitive angry way, the child will, 
according to its total make-up and the temporary set of its 
mind, abandon, continue or increase his curious manipulation of 
the person, and the observer will call his behavior teasing or 
tormenting. Teasing those who are unable or unwilling to 
revenge themselves then inevitably becomes a habit in the case 
of children of mean and brutal natures. 

When the hunting responses are called forth by a human 
being, they (alone or in combination with attempted mastery) 
produce a special form of play typically characterized, as Burk 
has shown, by "pursuing, throwing down, holding down, put- 
ting knee on vanquished victim, pinching, pulling hair, pulling 
ears, striking, shaking, throwing missiles, dancing- about con- 
quered victim, laughing, clapping hands, . . . smiling, a tri- 
umphant air." ['07, p. 228.] In the course of training, 
threats may to any extent replace the actual treatment of the 
person as prey or slave. Many degrees of intermixture of the 
responses provided to an animal to be caught, torn to pieces 
and eaten, and of those provided to an antagonist before and 
after he gives instinctive tokens of submission, are found. 
Obviously such cruelty and bullying can occur only when the 
one who arouses the hunting and mastering responses is unwill- 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS I05 

ing" or unable to protect himself. Such a one also probably 
specially arouses them.* 

The history of slave-driving, hazing, persecution, and the 
almost universal inequitable use of delegated powers by gov- 
ernors, generals, popes, school-masters and all those in authority, 
warrants the conviction that the hunting response does not 
originally distinguish man from other animals at all surely, and 
that submissive behavior does not as uniformly bring release 
from aggression in man as it does in the mammals in general. 
Motherly behavior and the other instinctive forms of kindliness 
are very inadequate protections against the inborn impulses to 
cruelty. In children of mean and brutal nature, bullying is 
therefore almost sure to occur unless it is deliberately stamped 
out by education. 

Man's inhumanity to man is so common, and his early his- 
tory has been pictured as a so unmitigated strife, that my 
account of original kindness and cruelty has doubtless seemed 
too mild. Popular evolutionary psychology has emphasized 
the selfish and blood-thirsty aggressiveness of our early ances- 
tors and the triumphs of civilization in holding the wild beast 
within us in check by the traditions of justice and mercy which 
each generation is forced to accept and which they somewhat 
mysteriously improve. All this is, in a rough way, true; but 
popular psychology has failed to make clear — and, even to 
realize fully — that civilization does not so much create kindness 
and repress cruelty as merely redirect them. It has also quite 
mistalcen the facts in fancying that the primitive male was a 
roving man-slayer and that the primitive Vv^oman's hand was 
against every creature save the child at her breast. The anthro- 
pologists who have made this a matter of study would, on 
the contrary, be fairly represented by the following quotation : 
''In short there is found in the humblest tribe of savages 

*When they are aroused by others, whose retaliation makes the out- 
come mutual rough play, wars of words, or the subjection of the 
original aggressor, the resulting behavior is, by custom, not called teasing 
or bullying. 



I06 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

no small share of the capacity to bear and forbear, no slight 
measure of warm affection and of a natural humanity. The 
dance and the chant, the merry game and the funeral wail, 
their wedding festivities, and their care of the sick and the 
infirm, even though it tires at last in the case of the very aged 
or of the chronic invalid, the festive ceremonies of naming and 
initiation, the devotion shown by each to the other in battle, 
and the general cohesiveness of life from year to year mark in 
the pooj;est savages an advance, solid though not phenomenal, 
above the highest social life of the lower animals. The more 
closely we study the earlier stages of human development, the 
more will we be inclined to agree with the eloquent summary 
of Tylor (Anthropology, p. 402) : "Mankind can never have 
lived as a mere struggling crowd, each for himself. Society 
is always made up of families bound together by kindly ties. 
Their habits, judged by our notions, are hard and coarse, yet 
the family tie of sympathy and common interest is already 
formed, and the foundation of moral duty already laid in the 
mother's patient tenderness, the father's desperate valour in 
defence of home, their daily care for the little ones, the affec- 
tion of brothers and sisters, and the mutual forbearance, hope- 
fulness, and trust of all."* [Sutherland, '98, vol. i, p. 351 f.] 
There are other original responses to the behavior of human 
beings — for example, sulkiness, grieving, the horse-play of 
youths, the cooing and gurgling of infants, and their satisfac- 
tion at being held, cuddled, and carried. There are also other 
situations offered by human nature to which original tendencies 
are bound. I cannot but believe that certain emphatic signs of 
youth and of old age, of health and of disease, of frankness and 
of deceit, of aggressiveness and of fear, and of many other con- 
ditions, all possess original potency to make a difference in the 
behavior of men toward the person in question. It would in- 
deed not be very far wrong to assume that every feature of 
instinctive behavior in any one human being produced some 
instinctive response in those witnessing it. 

*For an elaborate and admirable study of early helpfulness and its 
probable original roots, the reader should consult Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: 
a Factor of Evolution, '02. This author is perhaps over-enthusiastic and 
ready to find what he seeks, but his book is an appropriate antidote to 
the popular misconception of moral evolution. 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS IO7 

All these tendencies must, however, pass without further 
description here, partly that room may be left for more im- 
portant matters, but chiefly because I am unable to tell with 
any surety what these subtler tendencies are. 

Finally, it should be remembered that the original tendencies 
listed outside of this chapter often have the behavior of other 
human beings as their provocatives. Man originally makes 
no abstract dichotomy of nature into things and persons. 
Angry and frightened behavior, manipulation and hunting, for 
example, are fundamentals of social life as well as of adaptation 
to the rest of nature. 



chapter viii 

Responses to the Behavior of Other Human Beings: 

Imitation 

Imitation is a word of too many different meanings to be 
used without qualifications. It may mean a tendency to make 
movements similar to those made in the animal's presence, or a 
tendency to produce a result similar to a result produced in the 
animal's presence, or a tendency to use the behavior of other 
animals in any way as a model or guide influencing one's be- 
havior toward some degree of likeness thereto. The behavior 
of other animals may be regarded as working immediately, 
making the animal do the like in the same way that a loud noise 
makes him jump ; or by arousing an idea of the movement ; or 
by arousing an idea of the result produced ; or by arousing an 
idea that has by habit led to the movement ; or by arousing ideas 
of various sorts that indirectly make his behavior more like the 
behavior of the other animal than it would otherwise have been. 
Indeed, imitation is used by Tarde and other sociological writ- 
ers, to mean little more than the repetition, for any reason, of 
ideas and acts and feelings like those which other men have or 
have had. 

Even writers who are in general careful to define the facts 
which they assume or assert, commonly use the term imitation 
very loosely. For example it is impossible to tell whether 
Royce, in the following quotation, should be ranked as favoring 
the first, the second, the third, the fourth, or none, of the 
above: — "On the basis of the general social interests, there 
appear more special instincts, amongst which the most prom- 
inent is the complex of instincts suggested by the name Imita- 
tion. It is by imitation that the child learns its language. It 

io8 



IMITATION 109 

is by imitation that it acquires all the social tendencies that 
make it a tolerable member of society." ['03, p. 276.] 

It is better, therefore, instead of asking vaguely whether 
imitation of other men is an original tendency in man, to put 
separately the following questions : — 

Ai. Do the sense-presentations (chiefly through sight) of 
all movements as made by another produce in man, apart from 
all training, identical movements ? 

A2. Similar movement&? 

A3. Tendencies to make similar movements? 

A4. If some, but not all movements, have this power, 
which are they ? 

Bi. Do the sense-presentations of all positions of the body 
taken by another, all sounds made, all- facial expressions as- 
sumed and other results of movement upon the mover's body, 
produce in man, apart from all training, movements resulting 
in identical positions, sounds and looks? 

B2. Similar ones ? 

B3. Tendencies to make movements resulting in identical 
or similar ones ? 

B4, If some but not all positions, sounds, looks, and the 
like have this power, which are they ? 

GENERAL IMITATIVENESS 

In spite of the frequency of statements that the child makes 
every gesture that he sees and every sound that he hears,* no 

*Such as : — 

"The child toward the end of the first year, often reproduces nearly 
every sound he hears. Sometimes this is done almost automatically 
and with photographic exactness." [Kirkpatrick, '03, p. 228.] 

"When a child sees an interesting movement or hears an interesting 
sound, he has not only a tendency to move all his muscles, but a stronger 
special tendency to move the muscles necessary to reproduce the per- 
ceived movement or sound. [Ibid., p. 83.] 

"Imitation usually makes rapid strides in this period (second half 
year). In one case gestures were imitated at eight months, and words 
at nine. . . . Sigismund observed the instinct of imitation showing 



no THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

one who has tried to teach infants to talk, or five-year-olds to 
write and sing, will for a moment believe that behavior wit- 
nessed produces identical behavior by any original potency. 
Writers who have seemed to say so cannot, if possessed of any 
sense for fact, have meant what they said. Questions Ai and 
Bi can be dismissed each with a flat NO. At the most a gen- 
eral tendency to imitate can only be as in A2 and B2 a tendency 
to make movements, or get results, that are somewhat like 
whatever ones are witnessed. 

I can find no evidence that any such tendency is original in 
man. As will be stated later, certain particular sorts of be- 
havior do originally provoke in the spectator behavior that 
resembles them, but, so far as I can see, behavior in general 
does not. Consider the difficulty of getting an infant to even 
approximately 'wave a bye-bye,' 'pat-a-cake,' 'blow a kiss,' or 
'spit it out;' and the extreme difficulty of getting him to blow 
his nose, clear his throat, or gargle. Sit before him and per- 
form time after time a score of such novel but simple acts as 
putting your right hand on your head and your left on your 
right shoulder. He does not in nine cases out of ten do any- 
thing more like the act you perform than like any other one 
of the twenty. 

Of course, after he has performed many acts as sequents to 

itself in the third quarter of the first year." [Tracy, '93, second edition, 
p. 129.] 

"In man we have an imitative tendency of a somewhat different type. 
He is so sensitive to what companions do that he not only does what they 
do when the actions are of the usual type, but he is so affected by move- 
ments which he perceives that he reproduces them, although they are 
entirely new." [ Kirkpatrick, '09, p. 124.] 

"Young animals, even some not gregarious, have an irresistible impulse 
to imitate any action of their parents, toward which their instinctive 
impulse is very weak, and they learn in this way what would never be 
developed in them individually without this imitative impulse." [Gross, 
'95, Eng. trans, of '98, p. 79.] 

"This spontaneous imitation does not necessarily involve ideas. The 
mere perception of your beating the table with your hands or shaking 
your head is enough to prompt the child of about twelve months to beat 
the table with his own hands or shake his own head." [Stout, '03, p. 81.] 



IMITATION III 

many situations, the latter including often the perception or 
idea of the act, you may frequently, by performing" an act, get 
him to perform it also. But his act is then a result of learning, 
not of instinct ; and your behavior provokes it in the same way 
that a verbal suggestion might. The course of human educa- 
tion is such that among the situations to which acts are bound 
as sequents, ideas of the acts are frequent. A human being's 
behavior thus often provokes similar behavior in another by 
provoking an idea to which it is, by past learning, a sequent. 
Such influence of one person upon another illustrates, however, 
the laws of habit, and nothing more. 

The direct potency of behavior in creating something like 
it in another human being's behavior is not discoverable in any 
series of experiments in which the effects of the laws of 
exercise and effect* are precluded or allowed for. And the 
number of casual- observations purporting to give instances of 
it is very, very small. Leaving for the moment those con- 
cerned with the production of sounds we have a rather paltry 
showing. For example, Preyer tested his child with the act of 
protruding the closed lips. This movement, which the child 
made customarily as an expression of attentiveness, Preyer 
made, close in front of him, from time to time. On the 105th 
day the child made it when he did. Preyer considered that 
the child did it from imitation and not from general attentiver 
ness as hitherto, because of "the imperfect character of it In 
comparison with the perfect pursing of the lips when he makes 
the movement of his own accord in some other strain of the 
attention." ['81, Part I, p. 283.] This already very weak 
evidence of imitation is still further weakened by what fol- 
lows. On the following days the experiment gave negative 
results and "further attempts at imitation occurred so seldom 
and were so imperfect, notwithstanding much pains on my part 
to induce them, in the following weeks, that I was in doubt 
whether they might not be the result of accidental coincidences." 
['81, Part I, p. 283.] Preyer also reports that "in the seven- 

*An account of these laws will be given in Chapter XII. 



112 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

teenth week, the protruding of the tip of the tongue between 
the hps . . . was perfectly imitated once, when done by me 
before the child's face." ['8i, Part I, p. 284.] The rest of 
his cases seem clearly special instincts and acquisitions, as 
laughing at a laugh, crying at a cry, drinking from a cup, 
using a spoon properly, and the like. 

McDougall* reports that one of his children "on several 
occasions during his fourth month repeatedly put out his 
tongue when the person whose face he was watching made 
this movement." ['08, p. 106.] Tracy attributes to such 
imitation the fact that "a child of eight and a half months, hav- 
ing seen his mother poke the fire, afterwards crept to the 
hearth, seized the poker, thrust it into the ash-pan, and poked 
it back and forth with great glee, chuckling to himself" ['93, 
p. 104], but the case seems to prove rather too much and to be 
more probably explainable as the result of the general activity 
of the child, plus the direction of his attention to the poker 
and fire. 

Moore ['96, p. 18] assumes that the act of the child, then 
38 weeks old, in banging two spoons together upon seeing her 
mother do so was due to imitation. The chance for such an 
event to happen as a result of mere manipulation or learning 
is obviously very great. 

Dearborn ['10, pp. 42, 76, loi, 117 and 197] paid special 
attention to appearances of imitation but seems to have found 
only behavior probably due to the instinctive gesture-and voice- 
play or to connections formed by experience irrespective of imi- 
tation proper, and set in action because the imitatee's act di- 
rected attention to certain objects. His most plausible case is 
a very weak one. "231st day. Over and over this morning 
after I had pounded with a round stick or wand on a pillow, 
thus making a loud noise, she would take the wand and sim- 
ilarly shake it against the pillow. This is the first complex, 
clear, certain imitation that has been observed. There can be 

*It should be noted that neither Preyer nor McDougall believes in any 
general direct original potency of behavior witnessed to create its like. 



IMITATION 113 

no doubt about this case, for this is an action that would not 
be made accidentally. Five times this experiment was re- 
peated, and each time successfully. Later in the day she would 
not imitate the movement of shaking the hand to her." [p. loi] 
For this case to be other than weak, it would be necessary to 
have evidence that the infant of seven months did not, by rea- 
son of other- instincts or previous training, tend to take an 
object dangled interestingly before her, and did not so tend to 
pound with wand-like objects grasped. I cannot, of course, 
deny that such evidence existed in the case of this child, but 
with three infants that have been under my own observation, 
such behavior would by no means have meant imitation. And 
I venture to assert that had Dearborn pounded on the pillow 
with one hand, while dangling the wand nearby, the infant 
would have been hardly less likely to pound the pillow with the 
wand. Further, had he, after the first pounding, waved the 
wand horizontally in the air, the infant would not then have so 
waved the wand, but would have repeated the pounding. 

Cooley, who watched especially for evidence of general 
instinctive imitativeness in his children, found none that could 
not be explained better 'as the result of general activity or of 
learning. He notes sagaciously that, in one of the most plaus- 
ible appearances of imitation, the behavior of another person 
probably acted simply as the first step in a habit, since a verbal 
request produced the behavior in question even more surely. 
**M. had a trick of raising her hands above her head, which she 
would perform, when in the mood for it, either imitatively, 
when someone else did it, or in response to the words 'How big 
is M?', but she responded more readily in the second or non- 
imitative way than in the other." ['02, edition of 1910, p. 2'/,] 

I believe the same absence of evidence of any general or- 
iginal production of similar behavior by behavior witnessed 
holds good for sounds as well. To the hypothesis that seeing 
the movements of another's mouth-parts or hearing a series ot 
sounds in and of itself produces similar movements or sounds, 
1 find the following objections : — 
8 



114 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

"First of all, no one can believe that all of a child's speech 
is acquired by direct imitation. On many occasions the process 
is undoubtedly one of the production of many sounds, irrespec- 
tive of the model given, and the selection of the best one by 
parental reward. Any student who will try to get a child who 
is just beginning to speak, to say cat, dog and mouse and will 
record the sounds actually made by the child in the three cases, 
will find them very much alike. There will in fact be little 
that even looks like direct imitation until the child has 'learned' 
at least forty or fifty words. 

The second difficulty lies in the fact that different children, 
in even the clearest cases of the imitation of one sound, vary 
from it in so many directions. A list of all the sounds made in 
response to one sound heard is more suggestive of random 
babble as modified by various habits of duplicating sounds, 
than of a direct potency of the model. Ten children of the 
same age may, in response to 'Christmas,' say, kiss, kissus, 
krismus, mus, kim, kimus, kiruss, i-us and even totally unlike 
vocables such as hi-yi or ya-ya. 

The third difficulty is that in those features of word-sounds 
which are hard to acquire, such as the 'th' sound, direct imita- 
tion is inadequate. The teacher has recourse to trial and 
chance success, the spoken word serving as a model to guide 
satisfaction and discomfort. In general no sound not included 
in the instinctive babble of children seems to be acquired by 
merely hearing and seeing it made. 

A fourth difficulty is that by the doctrine of direct imita- 
tion it should not be very much more than two or three times 
as hard to repeat a two- or three-syllable series as to repeat a 
single syllable. It is, in fact, enormously harder. This is, 
of course, just what is to be expected if learning a sound 
means the selection from random babbling plus previous habits. 
If, for instance, a child makes thirty monosyllabic sounds like 
pa, ga, ta, ma, pi, gi, li, mi, etc., there is, by chance, one chance 
in thirty that in response to a word or phrase he will make that 
one-syllable sound of his repertory which is most like it, but 



IMITATION 115 

there is only one chance in nine hundred that he will make that 
two-syllable combination of his repertory which is most like it." 
['II, p. 254 f.] 

On the other hand the variety of elementary sounds which 
children make as a result of the instinctive vocal play, before 
there is any question of imitation, may be under-estimated. 
There is no need for imitation as a creator of the elements of 
articulate speech. Moore reports that *'At the close of the 
fourth month it was my impression that the child had made 
well nigh all the sounds which occur in the language." ['96, 

P- 115-]* 

Perhaps the advocates of imitation as an original mental 

function would admit that witnessed behavior does not origi- 
nally produce its like in any such uniform, mechanical way as 
a shock produces winking, or pain a cry. They would perhaps 
claim only a tendency or potentiality or disposition toward the 
production of similar movements or results. They would, 
that is, insist that questions (A3) and (B3) on page 109 are 
the really important questions. 

This doctrine that there is an original general potency of 
witnessed behavior to evoke its like, but only in the shape of a 
tendency to make like behavior appear a little oftener than it 
would by the laws of exercise and effect alone, is one that can 

*The following is a list of the principal sounds and syllables actually 
recorded bv Moore between the twelfth and fortieth weeks : 



In 


crying : 










Eng 




da 




u 


ma-ma-a 


ma-a-i 


i, explosive a 




e 


nin nin 


In 


babbling : 










£ng 




Z 




gr-r-r 


bo wo 


ang 




diddle, 


diddle, e, e 


ing 


bow bow 


d 




e 




ii-u ii 


ba 


t 




th 




udn 


pop-pa-pa-pa 


hi 




dth 




udu 


bob-ba 


a 




um go 




good 


mom-ma 


6 




a go 







eda 


ur-r-r 




a ma 




a da 


ta ta 


3 




hadn 




ma 


tduck 



Il6 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

at present be neither demonstrated nor refuted. It does not 
much matter, for if by original general imitativeness is meant 
only a dubious possibility that witnessed behavior will produce 
behavior that is occasionally somewhat more like it than would 
otherwise be expected, it is of little practical consequence. 
For even such a remnant of general original imitativeness, how- 
ever, I cannot find adequate evidence; and it has many funda- 
mental difficulties. The only tendencies or potentialities or 
dispositions that we know in human behavior are probabilities 
of connections between situation and response, and these prob- 
abilities of connections in behavior mean simply partly-made 
connections present or future between neurones and neurones, 
or the greater readiness and efficiency of certain neurones in 
making connections. 

The number of specific partly-formed bonds, or readinesses, 
or efficiencies, required for a general propensity toward imita- 
tiveness would, of course, be legion, representing a greater 
biological pre-formation than that required by all the tendencies 
so far listed in this inventory. General original imitativeness, 
even in the form of a potentiality, must, if it means anything, 
mean an extraordinarily elaborate inborn arrangement of man's 
neurones. 

The majority of those who have assumed the existence of 
an original tendency to imitate have probably not considered 
just what arrangements in the nervous system it requires. 
McDougall, who does consider the facts, noting that for each 
special movement so imitated "we have to assume the existence 
of a . . . perceptual disposition having this specific motor 
tendency," allows man's original nature as a possibility ("It 
may be that") a limited number of such percept-movement 
connections. ['08, p. 106] Kirkpatrick maintains the tradi- 
tional belief in spite of his awareness of this difficulty, and 
makes the logically necessary, but to my mind preposterous, 
assumption that by original nature "the path from the auditory 
center" for a given sound "is more open toward the motor 
center concerned in producing the same sound than in any 



IMITATION 117 

other direction," and that "A similar truth holds regarding- 
centers concerned in the visual perception of movement and 
the motor centers concerned in executing the same movement." 
['09, p. 293] 

I judge, therefore, that the original attentiveness of man 
to the acts, movements, positions, sounds and facial expressions 
of other men and the original satisfyingness of the approval so 
often got by doing what other men do, which have been de- 
scribed inXhapter VII, are really the tendencies or predisposi- 
tions or potentialities that do the work in question.* 

THE IMITATION OF PARTICULAR FORMS OF BEHAVIOR 

There being no general original imitativeness, are there per- 
haps certain particular movements, positions, sounds and facial 
expressions the perception of which does produce their like? 

McDougall's answer is that, first, the responses involved in 
the principal instincts which he lists (i.e., flight — fear, repul- 
sion — disgust, curiosity — wonder, 'pugnacity — anger, self- 
abasement — subjection, self-assertion=^elation, parental instinct 
— tender emotion) when made by one man, serve each as a sit- 
uation that originally provokes the same response in a spec- 
tator. In the second place, he thinks that a few of certain 
common acts may, when seen, be specific stimuli to similar acts 
in the infant who sees them. I quote from his statement of the 
first of these theories at some length. 

"I think the facts compel 14s to assume that in the gregar- 
ious animals each o'f the principal instincts has a special percep- 
tual inlet (or recipient afferent part) that is adapted to receive 

*Readers who have been misled by antiquated views of imitation in 
the lower animals, should note that the existence of an original general 
tendency in the monkeys to duplicate the movement that the animal 
observes another animal of the same species performing, or to produce 
the resulting sound or position of the body which the other animal pro- 
duces, is very improbable. Kinnaman, Watson, Haggerty and others who 
have observed the behavior of the primates scientifically find only slight 
semblances of imitation of any sort, and no signs whatever of a direct 
original potency of behavior witnessed to create its like. 



Il8 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

and to elaborate the sense-impressions made by the expressions 
of the same instinct in other animals of the same species — that, 
e.g., the fear-instinct has, besides others, a special perceptual 
inlet that renders it excitable by the sound of the cry of fear, 
the instinct of pugnacity a perceptual inlet that renders it 
excitable by the sound of the roar of anger. 

Human sympathy has its roots in similar specialisations of 
the instinctive dispositions on their afferent sides. In early 
childhood sympathetic emotion is almost wholly of this simple 
kind; and all through liie most of us continue to respond in 
this direct fashion to the expressions of the feelings and emo- 
tions of our fellowmen. This sympathetic induction of emotion 
and feeling may be observed in children at an age at which they 
cannot be credited with tmderstanding of the significance of 
the expressions that provoke their reactions. Perhaps the ex- 
pression to which tliey respond earliest is the sound of the 
wailing of other children. A little later the sight of a smiling 
face, the expression of pleasure, provokes a smile. Later still 
fear, curiosity, and, I think, anger, are communicated readily 
in this direct fashion from one child to another. . . . 

Adults vary much in the degree to which they display these 
sympathetic reactions, but in few or none are they wholly lack- 
ing. A merry face makes us feel brighter ; a melancholy face 
may cast a gloom over a cheerful company; when we witness 
the painful emotion of others, we experience sympathetic pain ; 
when we see others terror-stricken or hear their scream of 
terror, we suffer a pang of fear though we know nothing of 
the cause of their emotion or are indifferent to it; anger pro- 
vokes anger ; the curious gaze of the passer-by stirs our curios- 
ity; and a display of tender emotion touches, as we say, a 
tender chord in our hearts. In short, each of the great primary 
emotions that has its characteristic and unmistakable bodily 
expression seems to be capable of being excited by way of this 
immediate sympathetic response. If, then, the view here 
urged is true, we must not say, as many authors have done, that 
sympathy is due to an instinct' but rather that sympathy is 
founded upon a special adaptation of the receptive side of each 
of the principal instinctive dispositions, an adaptation that 
renders each instinct capable of being excited on the perception 
of the bodily expressions of the excitement of the same instinct 
in other persons. . . ." ['08, pp. 93-95, passim] 

There is something peculiarly attractive and plausible in 



IMITATION 119 

this doctrine that "the instinctive behavior of one animal 
directly excites similar behavior on the part of his fellows," 
but it is doubtful whether nature has worked to so simple a 
wholesale result. The similarity of the behavior is not sure 
in any case, and seems contrary to fact in the case of the tend- 
encies of pugnacity — anger and parental instinct — ^tender 
emotion. 

The spectators of an infuriated man, or of two micn raging 
at each other, are not thereby provoked to similar acts and 
feelings. They manifest rather 'curiosity-wonder,' forming a 
ring to stare, the world over. So with other mammals. When 
Professor McDougall wrote that "anger provokes anger" he 
probably had in mind the fact that angry behavior of A toward 
B provokes angry behavior of B toward A. But that is irrele- 
vant to his purpose, since he surely does not wish to contend 
that A's fleeing from B makes B flee from A, that A's shrink- 
ing from B makes B shrink from A, that A's self-abasement 
before B makes B abase himself before A. 

The instinctive behavior of the mother in holding, cuddling 
and fondling does not excite similar behavior on the part of her 
fellow men and women. They need not be moved thereby to 
cuddle it, her, one another, their own babies, or anything else. 
The chief response in them may be approval, envy or mild 
amusement, as often as tender emotion of the same sort as her 
behavior expresses. The sight of a child not being tenderly 
treated is in fact probably more likely to arouse tender emotion 
in spectators than the sight of one on whom it is lavished. It 
is indeed the unloved rather than the loved or the loving who 
move the motherly spirit in the spectator. 

No one common rule for the original effect of the perception 
of instinctive behavior in another man can be given. His 
behavior in attention, cautious approach, the avoiding reactions 
and the hunting instinct, produces something much like itself. 
His behavior in anger, combat for mastery, courtship and 
parental affection produces in tlie spectator something as a rule 
quite unlike itself. The effect of his behavior in attempted 



120 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

mastery and submission is dubious, varying greatly with its 
concomitants and being little known in any case. Seeing a 
man in the attitude of submission may make the spectator more 
submissive or more aggressive. Whether the perception of 
instinctive behavior originally produces like behavior is a ques- 
tion to be studied separately in the case of each instinct. 

The question is often very difficult.* Under present condi- 
tions children would usually learn by training to run from 
whatever others ran from, to look at whatever others looked 
at, and the like, even if there were no original tendencies to do 
so. Moreover the object or event, the perception of which 
causes A to respond by a certain instinctive behavior which 
then spreads to B, is likely to be perceived by B also, so that 
whether his behavior is a response to A's behavior or to the 
object itself is often in doubt. For example, A's fear at a 
snake may arouse B's fear indirectly by merely calling B's 
attention to the snake. Finally A's response may, upon his 
perception of B, be modified to include certain behavior which 
acts as a special signal to provoke approach, fear, or whatever 
the response may be, in B. Thus the danger-signal might be 
given by A when frightened in company, though not when 
frightened alone; and B might respond, not to A's general 
fright, but to the danger signal. 

The most probable cases for the production, by behavior 
witnessed, of similar behavior in the witness, are smiling when 
smiled -at, laughing when others laugh, yelling when others 
yell, looking at what others observe, listening when others 
listen, running with or after people who are running in the 
same direction, nmning from the focus whence others scatter, 
jabbering when others jabber and becoming silent as they be- 
come silent, crouching when others crouch, chasing, attacking 

*Even so simple a question as whether the human being's original 
nature makes him smile at a smile is in dispute. Cooley thinks not, 
referring the observed facts to the child's tendency to smile in satisfaction 
and to the satisfyingness of all unthreatening movement within his field 
of view. ['02, pp. 47 and 64.] 



IMITATION 121 

and rending what others hunt, and seeing whatever object 
another seises. 

In my opinion these probabilities are all, or nearly all, real, 
and are the chief, or even the only components of "the imitative 
tendency which shows itself in large masses of men, and pro- 
duces panics, and orgies, and frenzies o4-violence, and which 
only the rarest individuals can actively withstand." 

In the second division of his account of what particular 
acts originally provoke similar acts in the spectator, McDougall 
says : — 

"For the sake of completeness a fifth kind of imitation may 
be mentioned. It is the imitation by very young children of 
movements that are not expressive of*?eeling or emotion; it is 
manifested at an age when the child cannot be credited with 
ideas of movement or with deliberate s€lf-conscious imitation. 
A few instances of this sort have been reported by reliable 
observers; e.g., Preyer stated that his child imitated the pro- 
trusion of his lips when in the fourth month of life. These 
cases have been regarded, by those who have not themselves 
witnessed similar actions, as chance coincidences, because it is 
impossible to bring them under any recognized type of imita- 
tion. I h?.ve, however, carefully verified the occurrence of this 
sort of imitation in two of my own children; one of them on 
several occasions during his fourth month repeatedly put out 
his tongue when the person whose face he was watching made 
this movement. For the explanation of any such simple imi- 
tation of a particular movement at this early age, we have to 
assume the existence of a very simple perceptual disposition 
having this specific motor tendency, and since we cannot 
suppose such a disposition to have been acquired at this age, 
we are compelled to suppose it to be innately organized. Such 
an innate disposition would be an extremely simple rudimentary 
instinct. It may be that every child inherits a considerable 
number of such rudimentary instincts, and that they play a 
considerable part in facilitating the acquisition of new move- 
ments, especially perhaps of speech movements." ['08, p. 106] 

There may be such odds and ends of tendencies to dupli- 
cate particular acts. If so, no one knows what the acts are. 



122 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

So far, the list begins and ends unimpressively with sticking 
out the tongue! 

On the whole, the imitative tendencies which pervade 
human life and which are among the most powerful forces 
with and against which education and social reform w^ork, 
are, for the most part, not original tendencies to respond to 
behavior seen by duplicating it in the same mechanical way 
that one responds to light by contracting the pupil, but must be 
explained as the results of the arousal, by the behavior of other 
men, of either special instinctrve responses or ideas and im- 
pulses which have formed, in the course of experience, con- 
nections with that sort of behavior. Man has a few specialized 
original tendencies whose responses are for him to do what the 
man forming the situation does. His other tendencies to 
imitate are habits learned nowise differently from other habits. 



chapter ix 
Original Satisfiers and Annoyers 

THE original NATURE OF WANTS, INTERESTS AND MOTIVES 

Reason finds the aim of human Hfe the improvement and 
satisfaction of wants. By reducing those to which the nature 
of things and men denies satisfaction, or by increasing" those 
which can be fulfilled without injuring the fate of others, man 
makes his wants better. By changing the environment into a 
nature more hospitable to the activities he craves, he satisfies 
them. The sciences and arts arose by the impetus of wants, 
and continue in their service. They are the ultimate source 
of all values. 

The original basis of the wants which so truly do and should 
rule the world is the original satisfyingness of some states of 
affairs and annoyingness of others. Out of such original sat- 
isfiers and annoyers grow all desires and aversions ; and in such 
are found the first guides of learning. 

By a satisfying state of affairs is meant roughly one which 
the animal does nothing to avoid, often doing such things as 
attain and preserve it. By an annoying state of affairs is 
meant roughly one which the animal avoids or changes. 

Samples of original satisfiers or instinctive likes are: — 
To he with other human beings rather than alone, To be with 
familiar human beings rather than with strange ones, To move 
when refreshed, To rest when tired, To be "not altogether un- 
enclosed" when resting and at flight. 

Samples of original annoyers or instinctive aversions are : 
— Bitter substances in the month, Being checked in locomotion 
by an obstacle, Being Jnmgry, Being looked at with scorn by 
other men. The sight and smell of " excrementitious and putrid 
things, blood, pus, entrails," 

123 



124 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

To satisfy is not the same as to give sensory pleasure and 
to ^nnoy is not the same as to give pain. The latter confusion 
is specially misleading, for pain is only one of many annoyers, 
and does not inevitably annoy. Being gently held when one 
w^ants to fight, tho not painful, is exceedingly annoying. A 
mother may welcome the pain she suffers for her child. With 
pleasure the case is somewhat different. If by it is meant 
simply the felt tolerability and welcomeness of a state of affairs, 
pleasure is a close symptom — ^almost a synonym — of satisfy- 
ingness. But the pleasurableness of certain sensations as com- 
monly described in psychological treatises is a very partial 
symptom. Thus a sweet taste may be annoying and a bitter 
taste welcomed. 

A long list could be made of such states of affairs as feed- 
ing when hungry, rest when weary, being cuddled when sleepy, 
running after an animal that arouses hunting behavior, getting 
nearer to it in the course of the running, jumping upon it when 
near, seizing it after the jump, subduing it after seizing it, 
holding a baby after giving birth to one, having it smile when 
held, cooing to it when it smiles. Such a list, however, can be 
replaced by one law which any of its items would exemplify, — 
that when any original behavior-series is started and operates 
successfully, its activities are satisfying and the situations 
which they produce are satisfying. The absence of food when 
hungry, being held so that one cannot chase the passing rab- 
bit, being out-distanced by it, clutching tne air instead of the 
prey at which one leaps, having the offered toy withdrawn as 
one reaches for it, immovability in the obstacle one pushes, are 
samples from a similar long list of original annoyers, all of the 
class described by the law that when any original behavior- 
series is started, any failure of it to operate successfully is 
annoying. For these laws to be adequate to guide theory and 
practice, however, the word 'successfully' must be defined 
objectively. 

Successful operation cannot be defined adequately in terms 
of gross behavior without returning in a larger or shorter 



SATISFIERS AND AN NO VERS 125 

circle to satisfyingness itself. To say that successful means 
the 'normal' action and 'normal' consequences of instinctive 
behavior leaves us with 'normal' to define, and in the end it will 
be defined back again as the successful or satisfying. To say 
that 'successful' means what furthers the life-processes of the 
animal leaves on our hands as exceptions such cases as the 
sacrifice of the mother's own life-processes to those of the 
child on the one hand, and such cases as rest rather than motion 
when freezing and intemperance of all sorts, on the other. 

To replace the life-processes of the individual by the per- 
petuation of the species cuts out some of these exceptions, but 
adds others. Victory is satisfying, though gained by accident 
or numbers ; bullying is satisfying, though due to qualities that 
weaken the species. 

To say that successful means 'unimpeded' or 'unthwarted' 
or 'uninterfered with' tells fairly well what movements will be 
satisfying, since for a movement to be impeded is for it to fail 
as a movement. But to say that to fail to clutch the prey, 
clutching the air instead, is to be impeded or thwarted or inter- 
fered with is simply to say that an annoying situation is pro- 
duced. It is true that mere freedom to complete the m^otions 
to which original nature impels in a given situation is satisfying, 
but the majority of original satisfiers involves also the produc- 
tion by the movement of some one effect rather than another. 
To run when nature so moves is satisfying, but to get from 
this place, or to that place, or nearer that animal, or ahead of 
this man, is commonly the larger satisfier in instinctive re- 
sponses of flight and pursuit. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF READINESS 

Successful operation can in fact be satisfactorily defined, 
and what will originally satisfy and annoy can be safely pre- 
dicted, only as a characteristic of the internal behavior of the 
neurones. By original nature a certain situation starts a 
behavior-series : this involves not only actual conduction along 



126 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

certain neurones and across certain synapses, but also the read- 
iness of others to conduct * The sight of the prey makes the 
animal run after it, and also puts the conductions and connec- 
tions involved in jumping upon it when near into a state of 
excitability or readiness to be made. Even the neurone-con- 
nections involved in the response of 'clutching' to the situation 
of 'jumping and reaching it' and those involved in triumphing 
over it and rending it or talking it to one's lair are in a differ- 
ent condition when a chase is started than they otherwise are. 
The activities of the neurones which cause behavior are by 
original nature often arranged in long series involving all 
degrees of preparedness for connection-making on the part of 
some as well as actual connection-making on the part of others. 
When a child sees an attractive object at a distance, his neu- 
rones may be said to prophetically prepare for the whole series 
of fixating it with the eyes, running toward it, seeing it within 
reach, grasping, feeling it in his hand, and curiously manipu- 
lating it. 

The fact is that it is the neurones, not the body as a whole, 
whose life processes are primarily concerned in the 'successful' 
operation of a behavior-series. By 'normal' or 'successful' 
operation we mean the externally observable signs of the action 
of neurones that are ready to act. And by the failure, or 
thwarting, of an original tendency we mean the observable 
signs of failure to conduct and connect in neurones which are 

*That a conduction unit does vary, according to certain temporary 
conditions, in its readiness to act will be admitted by all students of brain 
physiology. The refractory period of a reflex is a demonstrated case of 
relative unreadiness. In the case of the extensor thrust in the dog, for 
example, the repetition of the stimulus within half a second or so does not 
produce a second thrust, and this unreadiness has been proved to be a 
function of the associative neurones concerned. [See Ladd and Wood- 
worth, 'ii, p. 164 f] That different conduction units under the same 
temporary conditions may vary in readiness to act as a result of inherited 
differentiation or their past history, would also, I think, be admitted by 
expects in brain physiology. This concept of varying readiness is, 
indeed, used freely in discussions of the physiology of reflexes, fatigue, 
recall, the association of ideas and the like. 



SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 12/ 

ready to so act. Such satisfying- states of affairs as those hsted 
at the beginning' of this chapter are states of affairs which 
stimulate, or at least permit, the action of neural connections 
and neural conductions that are in readiness to act; and the 
annoying states of affairs listed prevent such from acting. 

The essential satisfyingness in these cases is then the con- 
duction along neurones and across synapses that are ready for 
conduction and the essential annoyingness in these cases is the 
absence of such conduction. 

Now this law holds good not only in the case of such 
definite behavior-series as feeding, hunting, fighting or sex- 
indulgence, but throughout behavior. Call the neurone, neu- 
rones, synapse, synapses, part of a neurone, part of a synapse, 
parts of neurones or parts of synapses — whatever makes up 
the path which is ready for conduction — a conduction unit. 
Then for a conduction unit ready to conduct to do so is satis- 
fying, and for it not to do so is annoying. 

Along with this concept of readiness to conduct, the oppo- 
site fact of unreadiness or refractoriness must be considered. 
If, as I believe, any conduction unit may be in a condition of 
repugnance to conduction in the sense that its own activities 
at the time make it less excitable by stimuli to conduction than 
is the case with the average condition of the average conduction 
unit, and if the law of readiness is true, we should expect as a 
law of unreadiness that for a conduction unit unready to con- 
duct to he forced to conduct zuould he annoying.^ 

This seems to be the case. Unreadiness to conduct, if such 
a thing existed, would be expected, as a result of long exercise 
of conduction across a fatiguable synapse and as a result of 

*It is probably also the case that for a conduction unit that is unready 
for conduction not to conduct is satisfying; but evidence is so slight upon 
this complementary hypothesis that it will not be discussed here. It 
is a question whether the positive satisfyingness of rest for a function 
after its exercise, of peace after worry, of safety after fear, and the like 
is due to relief from conduction for unready conduction-units or to the 
actual conduction of ready units concerned in sensing bodily languor, 
gentle speech, familiar faces and the like. 



128 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

weakening of the conduction unit by disease. For, in either 
case, the common response of protoplasm would be to protect 
itself against less remunerative action in favor of feeding and 
rest. Little is known of conduction units, their exhaustion 
or their diseases, but that little seems to show that conduction 
along an exhausted or diseased conduction unit is annoying. 
In neurasthenia and in so-called psychasthenia, activities of the 
nervous system which in health are satisfying or indifferent 
become annoying. When, on the other hand, the nervous sys- 
tem is in fine fettle from health and abundant sleep, activities 
which on the average are slightly distasteful, are welcomed. 

I believe that the original tendencies of man to be satisfied 
and to be annoyed — to welcome and reject — are described by 
these three laws of readiness and unreadiness : — ( i ) that when 
a conduction unit is ready to conduct, conduction by it is satis- 
fying, nothing being done to alter its action, (2) that for a 
conduction unit ready to conduct not to conduct is annoying, 
and provokes zvhatever responses nature provides hi connection 
with that particular annoying lack; (3) that when a conduction 
unit unready for conduction is forced to conduct, conduction 
by it is annoying* 

The facts hardest to account for by these laws are what 
may be called the independent annoyers — states of affairs 

*The account given here of the '"fluence of readiness to conduct and 
unreadiness to conduct resembles Ziehen's doctrine that pleasurable feel- 
ing-tone parallels a great, and unpleasant feeling-tone parallels a slight, 
readiness to discharge on the part of the neurones that are in action. 
"The pleasure-pain component of the psycho-physiological process is 
identical with the readiness of the cortical cells to discharge. A certain 
disturbance in the cells of the cortex (for example, a chemical change) 
expresses a certain sensory and ideational conscious content. In the 
case of any such disturbance the readiness to discharge can vary greatly 
— -that is, the tendency and capacity to transmit the disturbance (for ex- 
ample, the chemical change) further along the association or projection 
fibres which arise from the cells, can be greater or less. The positive 
aflfective processes express a great readiness to discharge ; the negative, a 
slight readiness." ['03, p. 15] Ziehen, however, assumes a scope and 
nature for the parallelism very different in certain respects from those 
to which the account given here would lead. 



SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 129 

which almost always annoy, in whatever behavior-series they 
happen, such as sensory pains. It is necessary to suppose that 
the conduction units whose action causes sensations of pain are 
almost always unready to conduct. And for this supposition 
I must admit that there is no conclusive evidence. There is 
some, however. The interval between the application of the 
external stimulus and the pain-sensation is far longer than is 
the case with other senses. Moderate doses of certain drugs 
prevent the action of these conduction units without preventing 
the action of those concerned with other sensations.* The fact 
that extreme intensities of almost all if not all sensory stimuli 
produce pain would be simply and satisfactorily explained by 
the law of unreadiness. For it would be an expected conse- 
quence of the law of unreadiness that all conduction units 
should be unready to conduct stimuli far more energetic than 
those to which they were adapted. The law of unreadiness 
also accounts for the rare, but important, cases where sensory 
pains do not annoy, but are even potent satisfiers. A man 
knowing that pain in his eyes would mean that he was cured 
of threatened blindness might well cherish that pain when it 
came. In his case we should expect that the conduction units 
concerned would be made ready. 

Finally, there are no important facts in opposition to the 
supposition that unreadiness to conduct on the part of the con- 
duction unit concerned is characteristic of the conduction units 
concerned in sensory pains, and there is no important conflicting 
hypothesis to account for the intolerability of pain.f 

*The central excitation of these conduction units producing halluci- 
nations, illusions and images of pain is very rare, as if they were far 
less ready to act; even very violent and prolonged pain, as that of 
child-birth, can not commonly be imaged. This fact, however, can be 
explained otherwise. 

t It is interesting to note that in the early stages of psychology no 
need was felt for any cause for the intolerability of pain. That pain 
should be avoided was taken for granted for much the same reason 
that primitive physics took it for granted that a stone thrown up 
would fall again. But intrinsically there is no more reason to assume 
that man must be distressed by pains and act so as to avoid them than 
to assume that he will be distressed by sweet tastes or the color blue. 
Some objective physiological hypothesis for the fact there must be. 

9 



130 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

The Other chief original independent annoyers — annoyers 
per se — besides the sensory pains are bitter tastes, the sight, 
touch and smell of entrails, excrement and putrid flesh, touch- 
ing slimy things, depression as in fear, grief, the absence of 
human beings, their disapproving behavior, and very intense 
sensory stimuli of all sorts. For some of these, such as bitter- 
ness, entrails, excrement, putrid flesh, sliminess, fear and grief, 
we must suppose, as with sensory pain, that the conduction 
units concerned are chronically unready. The explanation of 
the others is easier. The absence of human beings implies that 
the conduction units concerned with gregarious behavior, which 
are chronically ready to act, can not act. Disapproval by other 
human beings implies that the chronic craving for approval is 
denied indulgence and that certain conduction units, concerned 
in the conditions of the brain and body as a whole which we 
call shame, depression, and the like, are forced to act. The 
conduction units concerned with depression would by any 
hypothesis be supposed to be, in healthy men, chronically un- 
ready to act. For very intense sensory stimuli, as has been 
noted, man's neurones are chronically unready. 

The states of affairs which have the most reason to be re- 
garded as original satisfiers per se, independently of any partic- 
ular behavior-series, are sweet, meaty, fruity and nutty tastes, 
glitter, color and motion in objects seen, being rocked, swung 
and carried (in childhood), rhythm in percepts and movements, 
elation, the presence of other human beings, their manifesta- 
tions of satisfaction and their instinctive approving behavior. 
These are easily enough brought under the rule of the action 
of conduction units almost always ready to act. 

The cloying effect of long continuance of a single sensory 
satisfaction, whereby it loses its zest and turns into an annoy- 
ance, is obviously in harmony with the hypothesis that satisfy- 
ingness is due to the action of conduction units which are 
in readiness to act. Continued action of a conduction unit 
would impair its readiness to act and would often involve the 
continued deprivation from action of other conduction units. 



SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 13^ 

The satisfyingness, as a novelty, of states of affairs that for 
long thereafter are indifferent would also be in harmony with 
the theory. For a conduction unit which was in general only 
very slightly in readiness to act would, after having acted, 
have a rather long latent period of indifference. 

Indeed, the phenomena of interest, cloying, fatigue and 
neurasthenia, all seem to be reduced to order when viewed as 
results of the conception of readiness of conduction units to 
conduct and of the laws that conduction by units in readiness 
is satisfying", while conduction by units in unreadiness and 
readiness without conduction are annoying. 

One important group of satisfiers and annoyers deserves 
special mention. Other things being equal, to have sensations, 
to initiate movements and to make things happen are satisfying. 
That is, if these activities do not involve any annoyer (hke bit- 
terness, the exercise of a fatigued synapse, or disapproving 
looks) they satisfy in and of themselves. The human nervous 
system is 'ready to act' not only in such immediately practical 
ways as get food, sleep, protection or offspring, but also in that 
great variety of ways described as attentiveness to novel sen- 
sory stimuli, the curious examination of things, vocalization, 
visual exploration, facial grimaces, manipulation, diffuse play 
and 'being a cause.' What may be roughly called tendencies 
to general mental activity and general physical activity (though 
they are not as a matter of fact absolutely general) when given 
exercise satisfy, and when denied exercise annoy. The con- 
duction units involved in many acquired situation-response 
series also in due time 'crave exercise' — that is, become 'ready 
to act' — so that imaging or thinking may become as true a 
want as food when hungry, or capture after a chase.* 

It should be noted that the annoyingness due to the denial 
of action to a conduction unit ready to act differs essentially 
from the annoyingness due to action by an unready unit. In 
the case of the former (e.g., the absence of other human beings, 

*The facts noted in this paragraph will be stated more fully and more 
clearly in Chapter X. 



132 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

lack of approving notice when amongst men, insomnia, or being 
held when desirous to pursue) the observable external behavior 
is of a restless, worrying, diffuse and aggressive sort ; and the 
report of the person concerned of his internal state is of irrita- 
tion, longing, and of an undefined lack. In the case of the 
latter (e.g., tooth-ache, a cut, a blinding light, vile tastes and 
odors, or brain-fag) the externally observable behavior is much 
more often straightforward, restricted and defensive; and the 
person's report is much oftener of anguish, hatred and a specific 
repulsion. 

Where, according to the hypothesis, denial of action to a 
ready unit is combined with forcing the action of another un- 
ready unit (as in the absence of food when hungry, the presence 
of work when exhausted, or in scornful treatment by men) the 
annoyingness often shows a mixture or alternation of these 
two varieties. 

On the whole it seems best to assume, subject to further 
knowledge, the truth of this hypothesis that any state of affairs 
is originally satisfying which lets a conduction unit that is 
ready to conduct, do so, and that any state of affairs is origin- 
ally annoying which forces an unready conduction unit to con- 
duct or restrains from conducting one that is in readiness. 

Ordinarily, then, any situation not only produces full action 
in certain conduction units, but also predisposes other units 
further on in the chain toward or against conduction. Thus 
the mechanism of even so simple a behavior-series as fixating 
a bright light, chasing a rabbit, or seizing and eating a berry is 
extremely complex. Such a complexity of excitants, checks 
and releases, as well as straightforward connections, is, how- 
ever, exactly what human behavior requires and what the 
physiology of the neurones suggests. We have, therefore, the 
problem of deciding what original tendencies are found or put 
in readiness and unreadiness, by any given situation, as well 
as what bonds are aroused to immediate and total action by it. 

The detailed solution of this problem for each important 



SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 133 

situation I shall not attempt. In listing the readinesses and 
unreadinesses which different situations produce or call into 
play, psychology can at present make little advance beyond 
what any shrewd observer can see for himself once he under- 
stands the general principles. If each behavior-series is 
thought of as an army sending scouts ahead, or as a train whose 
arrival at any one station means the sending of signals on be- 
fore whereby this switch is opened, that one closed, and the 
other left dependent on the size or speed or color of the train, 
— if the sight of a small object in indirect vision is realized as 
a cause of remote readinesses of the neurones connected with 
the fovea, the neurones concerned in reaching and grasping, 
even possibly of the neurones concerned in tasting, — enough 
has been accomplished for our purpose. To discover the exact 
nature of such readinesses is one of the notable tasks of the 
sciences of human behavior. 

the explanation of 'multiple response^ or 
Varied reaction^ 

One further general fact with respect to original annoyers 
and satisfiers requires mention. The details of very many of 
the forms of original behavior which have been and will be 
listed in this inventory involve varied response to an annoying 
State of affairs until a certain satisfying condition is attained. 
That is, the situation provokes, not one fixed response, but any 
one of several responses, the failure on the part of the one first 
made to produce a satisfying state of affairs being (in connec- 
tion with the rest of the situation) the stimulus to one of the 
other responses, so that the animal does many things and does 
them over and over again until some one of them, or some 
external event, puts an end to the annoying state of affairs or 
brings the requisite satisfaction. Thus, in responding to an 
attractive object seen, a variety of reaching movements may be 
made until the contact with the object ends the series. The 
contact then sets off a variety of grasping movements until the 



134 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

satisfying clutch of the object ends the series. The clasping- 
of the object may then in turn set off a variety of retractions 
and flexions until the presence of the object in the mouth 
quiets these new cravings. Similarly, the situation 'being 
held' when the neurones concerned in running about are 
ready to act, provokes a variety of v^^rigglings, stiffenings, 
pushings and the like. The failure of any one of these to 
relieve the annoying confinement leads (in connection with the 
rest of the original situation) to a more energetic or different 
movement, the series being terminated when some one of the 
varied reactions ends the annoyance by securing escape. The 
process is easily observable in the behavior of the lower animals. 
A kitten which is utterly devoid of any acquired habits of re- 
sponse to the situation 'being confined alone in a small cage, 
when hungry, with food outside,' will respond to that situation 
quite instinctively as follows. "It tries to squeeze through any 
openings; it claws and bites at the bars or wire; it thrusts its 
paws out through any opening and claws at everything it 
reaches; it continues its efforts when it strikes anything loose 
and shaky ; it may claw at things within the box. It does not 
pay very much attention to the food outside, but seems simply 
to strive instinctively to escape from confinement. The vigor 
with which it struggles is extraordinary. For eight or ten 
minutes it will claw and bite and squeeze incessantly." [Thorn- 
dike, '98, edition of 1911, p. 35.] 

The importance of the original tendencies whereby the 
annoyingness of a certain state of affairs causes a series of 
varied movements until the required satisfier is produced* is 
very great, not only because of their number and frequent 
action, but also because of their very easy modification into 
special habits by the selection of the 'successful' response and 
its association with the situation. Variation is the first requi- 
site for progress in the behavior of an individual as it is in the 
development of the race. 

*0r until the animal is distracted from the situation, as by fatigue, 
sleep, or new sensory appeals. 



chapter x 

Tendencies to Minor Bodily Movements and Cerebral 
Connections 

The many original tendencies to movements concerned 
with the management of food after it is in the mouth, with 
breathing, excretion, the care of the eyes, teeth, nails and skin, 
the treatment of wounds and bruises, with rest and sleep, and 
with the component details of fighting, flight, hunting, the sex 
instincts and the rest need not be listed here. For various 
forms of special education such a list would be important. 
For example, a physician may profit from knowing that snuf- 
ling is original while blowing the nose is not, or that a pill on 
the extreme back of the tongue is originally far likelier to arouse 
swallowing than one on the front; and a teacher of boxing 
might profitably study the native responses to this or that attack. 
But for our purpose the space had better be kept for more gen- 
erally significant tendencies. 

vocalization, visual exploration and manipulation 

The apparently aimless vocalization, eye-movements, and 
manipulation of objects in play are, on the contrary, tendencies 
of the utmost importance. 

A little child, apart from training, makes all sorts of 
movements of the vocal cords and mouth-parts resulting in 
cooings, babblings, yellings, squealings and squawkings of great 
variety. He moves his eyes so as to bring different parts of any 
object which attracts visual attentiveness upon the fovea. He 
pulls, pokes, turns, picks up, drops, shoves, rolls, scratches, 
waves, and otherwise manipulates an object that permits it. 

This behavior is characterized, at least to superficial ob- 

135 



136 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

servation, by aimlessness, ubiquity, and indiscriminateness. 
The movements seem to do nothing for the animal, to be made 
to any one situation (of a certain class) as well as to another, 
and to be made hit-or-miss in any order. Vocal play seems to 
occur with no ulterior consequence. Any stimulus from with- 
out or within, which does not connect with some antagonistic 
vocal activity, seems to evoke it. One sound or another, one 
sequence of sounds or another, seems to occur indifferently. 
So, also, the manipulation of objects under consideration seems 
quite without an ulterior end such as the 'reach-grasp-put in 
mouth' responses display. It seems to be a response to any 
object that permits it ; and turning, poking, scratching seem to 
occur as fortuitous emergences from a set of indifferent re- 
sponses. A general tendency to aimless exercise of the neu- 
rones controlling the movements of the eyes, vocal apparatus and 
free forelimbs seems thus a just description of the tendency. 

For a rough and elementary description it is just. But a 
more critical consideration of the behavior will show that it is 
conformable to the general type of a connection of a definite 
response with a definite situation, perpetuated in inheritance 
by its utility. 

All original tendencies are aimless in the sense that fore- 
sight of the consequences does not effect the response. The 
animal does not originally run from a tiger because he intends 
to get away. He runs because of the tiger and because run- 
ning in that situation is a satisfier to his neurones. He equally 
fingers the block because it is what it is and because fingering 
it satisfies him. As to the aim seen ah extra, the end as gained 
rather than as foreseen, no instincts have surer utility than the 
apparently objectless voice-, eye-, and fingers-play. For the 
end of voice-play is language; the end of eye- and finger-play 
is knowledge. In the long run, the apparently random voice- 
play is more useful to the species than the specific calls of hun- 
ger, pain, fright, protection and wooing; and the puttering 
with eyes and fingers is more useful than the movements of 
flight, pursuit, attack, capture and eating. What might ap- 



MINOR MOVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS 137 

pear to be perverse luxuries in the business of keeping one's 
self and one's offspring alive, turn out to be, in connection 
with certain other tendencies, means of exterminating all ene- 
mies, securing food in regular abundance, and remaking the 
environment to suit man's almost indefinite multiplication. 

The definiteness of the situations and responses would be 
revealed if observation could include what goes on in the nerv- 
ous system as well as in more external behavior. The appar- 
ent identity of the response to different things fas when a child 
prattles alike to his mother, his doll, and the sky), and the ap- 
parent indiscriminateness of the selection from poking, pull- 
ing, scratching, and so on in response to apparently the same 
thing, would then be seen to be illusions. The inner action of 
nutrition, fatigue and growth plays here a larger part in de- 
ciding which of the many possible movements shall be made, 
than it does in the case of flight or fighting, and so justifies the 
rough usage of the term 'multiple response to the same situa- 
tion.' The situation, too, may be, in addition to the proper in- 
ner conditions in the neurones, so general as 'anything that con- 
trasts with the rest of the visual field' or 'anything touching 
the palm of the hand' or even simply 'being alive, awake and 
with one's vocal apparatus not otherwise engaged.' 

Vocalization, visual exploration and manipulation are then 
to be described as general' tendencies to random exercise of 
the neurones concerned in making many sounds, many eye 
movements and many manual experiments only if we mean by 
general and random this particular generality and randomness. 
When Spencer and others speak of 'excess' movements or the 
'overflow of nerve energy' into 'all sorts of movements or the 
'chance' action of the muscles of speech, facial expression, ges- 
ture and manual play, they are not describing the facts of 
early motor play accurately. These movements are in excess 
of those needed for eating, fighting and the like, but they are 
as grounded in fundamental tendencies of the organism as the 
latter. It is not that the nerve energy of man (and in some 
measure of the monkeys) oz>er-f[ows as that of fishes and many 



138 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

mammals does not, but that it flows into some hundreds of 
channels productive of movements of the vocal cords, mouth- 
parts, facial muscles, eyes and hands, as it does not in a fish or 
mammal. The actions are 'chance' ones only in the sense that 
observation of the external situation alone can not predict them 
nearly so well as it can the actions of eating, flight or attack. 
They do not even seem to be perfectly random. We can at least 
predict that an infant will say 'ah goo' at an earlier age than 
he will say 'i da,' that he will pat an object far oftener than he 
will place his little finger on it, and many other facts of the 
same sort. We can predict with very great surety that a child 
will not roll his eyes independently at a toy or grasp it with 
his thumb and ring-finger. The randomness is, in any case, 
limited to the choice from among certain responses which, as 
a total group, are thoroughly defined. 

Lest this somewhat subtle discussion of the more exact de- 
scription of these tendencies distract attention from the sheer 
external behavior, I repeat that vocalization means, roughly, 
the responding by many different sounds in many different se- 
quences to many different external situations, and that from it 
develop, under training, speech, song and other vocal arts. 
Visual exploration means, roughly, responding by many eye 
movements so as to bring various parts of an object upon the 
spot of clearest vision, and from it develops much in our per- 
ceptions of 'things,' our habits of purposive examination, read- 
ing and the like. Manipulation means, roughly, responding 
by many different arm, hand and finger movements to many 
different objects, and gives the possibility of the habits of using 
tools, writing, drawing, and the bulk of modern skilled 
occupations. 

OTHER POSSIBLE SPECIALIZATIONS 

ConstrucHveness. — In the ordinary descriptions of original 
tendencies by the consequences to which they lead, 'destructive- 
ness' and 'constructiveness' occupy prominent places. This 
apparent contradiction is due simply to the impropriety of de- 



MINOR MOVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS 139 

scribing a tendency by its consequences instead of by the actual 
situation and response. Original nature knows nothing of 
destroying or creating — of changing an object into a status 
less or more profitable to the welfare of the world in general. 
Its tendency is simply to manipulate objects in the fashion 
that has just been described. With this go the satisfactions 
of doing something rather than nothing, of getting a more 
varied and novel series of impressions, and of having acts pro- 
duce perceptible changes, which are taken account of under the 
proper instinctive interests. Waving of arms and legs, kick- 
ing and rolling, grimacing, prattling, dropping toys, blowing 
whistles, tearing books, digging holes in the sand, and build- 
ing with blocks are all of the same pattern. No one would 
think it proper to speak of instincts of constructing and de- 
stroying the air in the sense of making words and making 
senseless jabber. One word, vocalization, is wisely used to 
describe the tendency to make babbling movements. So one 
word, manipulation, may replace constructiveness and destruc- 
tiveness to signify the tendency to make certain hand, arm and 
finger movements. 

Cleanliness. — ^James ['93, vol. 2, p. 434!] thinks it prob- 
able that there is "a primitive impulse to clean one's self," but 
perhaps cleanliness is not the best name for the tendency to be 
annoyed by sticky and slimy stuff on the hands and to wipe 
it off on anything handy, commonly the body itself or what 
happens to be covering it! That is about as far as original 
'cleanliness' goes. It is instructive to note that the mysophobia 
or dread of foulness in some insane people, which James takes 
to be "the convulsive exaggeration" of an original impulse to 
cleanliness, is almost always to wash the hands — not the face 
or feet — "a hundred times a day." There are tendencies to 
'lick one's chops,' to pick at scabs, to free the teeth by tongue 
or finger from objects stuck between them, to rub one's fingers 
between one's toes and to bite one's nails, which are, perhaps, 
homologous with animal cleanliness, and like it better named 
tendencies to care for the skin and month-parts. 



I40 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Adornment and Art. — Kirkpatrick and others think that 
there is an original specific tendency to adorn one's body. But 
it seems more probable that painting, tattooing, decoration with 
shells, flowers, clothes, feathers and the like are all learned 
responses selected by their value in connection with gaining no- 
tice, approval, mastery, and success in courtship. 

The originality of a specific tendency to make beautiful 
objects may also be doubted. Constructiveness of all sorts 
seems to be the result of experience acting on general manipula- 
tive play. Habits of making admired, rather than unnoticed 
or disliked, objects would easily be selected for survival. This, 
I judge, is all that Marshall really claims in his statement that 
the "art-impulse" is a "blind impulse leading man to create 
with little or no notion of the end they have in view . . . 
a common heritage for all members of our race." ['94, p. loi.] 
This original 'art-impulse,' he continues, is for man "to use his 
surplus vigor in crude attempts . . . which, in their devel- 
oped form, [italics mine] give us our best art products." 
Hirn, who has made the most acute study of the origins of art, 
finds them chiefly in "the instinctive tendency to express over- 
mastering feeling, to enhance pleasure, and to seek relief from 
pain," laying especial emphasis on the tendency to engage in 
mental activity for its own sake, which, following the tradi- 
tional psychological terminologs^ he describes as "a yearning 
after increased consciousness, which leads us to pursue, even 
at the risk of some passing pain, all feelings and emotions by 
which our sensation of life is reinforced and intensified." 
['00, p. 7^.'] 

CURIOSITY AND MENTAL CONTROL 

Curiosity. — Many of the constituents of what is vaguely 
called instinctive curiosity have already been listed. Atten- 
tion to novel objects and human behavior (pp. 46 f. and 88), 
cautious approach (p. 65), reaching and grasping (p. 50), the 
food-trying reactions of putting in the mouth, tasting and 
biting, general exploration with the eyes and manipulation with 



MINOR MOVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS I4I 

the hands (pp. 51 and 135) are the responses which, in connec- 
tion with the situations that evoke them, make up a large part 
of so-called curious behavior. 

The element not hitherto listed may best be named the love 
of sensory life for its own sake. Merely to have sensations is, 
other things being equal, satisfying to man. Mental emptiness 
is one of his great annoyers. We may justly picture the 
brain of man as containing many neurones, in connection with 
the sensory neurones, which crave stimulation — are in "readi- 
ness to conduct" — though no immediate gratification of any 
more practical want follows their action. Man wants sense 
impressions for sensation's sake. Novel experiences are to 
him their own -sufficient reward. It is because they satisfy 
this want as well as because of their intrinsic satisfyingness, 
that visual exploration and manipulation are the almost inces- 
sant occupations of our waking infancy. 

The Instinct of Multiform Mental Activity. — The hypoth- 
esis that man's brain contains many neurones in 'readiness to 
act' besides those whose action is concerned in the behavior- 
series of the specific instincts must, I think, be carried further. 
There are not only neurones ready to be set in action by direct 
stimuli from the sense-organs, but also neurones ready to be 
set in action by more remote or secondary connections. For 
example, a baby likes not only to see a pile of blocks tuml^le 
or a wheel go around, but also to find the blocks tumbling 
when he hits them, or the wheel revolving when he pushes a 
spring. Satisfactions of the second sort are, indeed, if any- 
thing the more potent. Merely hearing the toot of a horn is 
a feeble joy compared to blowing it. Now 'tumbling when I 
hit them,' 'whirling when I push,' and 'tooting when I blow' are 
samples of secondary connections, a step removed from mere 
sensations. They represent the action of the neurones con- 
cerned in the child's manipulations, those concerned in his sen- 
sations and those concerned in connecting the latter with the 
former. They possess the satisfyingness of manipulation, of the 
love of sensory life per se, and something more, which, for lack 



142 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

of a better name, I shall call the satisfyingness of mental control. 
To do something and have something happen as the conse- 
quence is, other things being equal, instinctively satisfying, 
v^^hatever be done and whatever be the consequent happening.* 

Now mental control, or doing something and having some- 
thing happen, is satisfying in very many concrete forms. Not 
only making movements and thereby getting sensations, but 
also making an ideal plan and thereby getting a conclusion, 
making an imaginary person and thereby getting further imag- 
inations of how he would act, and countless other 'gettings from 
doings,' are satisfying. They are originally satisfying since, as 
soon as training gives the ability to make the plan or image 
and get the result, nature gives satisfyingness to the connec- 
tion.t 

No assumption whatever of teleology or of prearranged 
favoring of such conditions as later life requires is involved in 
the satisfyingness of doing something and having something 
happen. I should, for example, replace in Lindley's descrip- 
tion ['97, p. 436] the italicized words by those in parentheses. 

"Let it be called a general impulse or instinct to exercise the 
intelligence as such (secondary neurone connections). Such 
a gymnastic must consist (consists) in the most widely various 
sorts of activity, a deployment as far as possible of all resources 
of body and mind in ways which are to be of use later (are de- 
termined by the excitability of conduction units apart from 
those concerned in the more specialized instincts.)" 

Mental activity is then, other things being equal, satisfying 
almost or quite in general. The neurones concerned in the 

*This is, I judge, the fact which Groos and others have in mipd, 
or should have in mind, when they speak of man's instinct of 'pleasure at 
being a cause,' or of 'experimentation.' A typical illustratiori, of the earlier 
appearances of such behavior is the following from Shinn ['99, p. 10] : 
"In the twentieth month she would often cover her eyes with her hands 
and take them away; hide her face in a cushion, or on her own arms, 
often saying, 'Dark/ then look up, — 'Light now.' " 

t The 'other things being equal' is of course implied throughout. Mak- 
ing a connection that has to be made against strong cravings to rest or to 
do something else may be very annoying. 



MINOR MOVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS 143 

Special instincts are not the only ones in readiness to act. 
Neurones are roused to action in the course of learning which 
also were ready to act and whose action therefore is satisfying. 
It is as instinctive or 'natural' for certain men to enjoy the un- 
forced exercise of thought and skill as to enjoy food, sleep, 
companionship, approval or conquest. 

The Instinct of Multiform Physical Activity. — A similar line 
of observation and reasoning justifies the conclusion that, other 
things being equal, many unforced movements besides those 
specifically made in response to food to be got, foes to be sub- 
dued and the like, are originally satisfying. It is as instinctive 
for the baby to curl its toes, wave its arms and wriggle its head 
as to suckle. The boy instinctively enjoys a gymnasium as well 
as chasing cats. The grasping, chasing, wrestling and pulling 
in response to the real situation of the hunt doubtless have a 
richer zest than the club-swinging or fancy tumbling done, as 
it were, in a biological vacuum, but what satisfaction they do 
give may be instinctive. After long rest almost any unforced 
movement is more satisfying to the child than further inaction 
would be. 

The Instinct of Workmanship and the Desire for Excel- 
lence. — The gifted economist Veblen uses as a pillar for his 
doctrines of human productive labor the existence of an "in- 
stinct of workmanship" which he defines as follows : — 

"He (man) is an agent seeking in every act the accomp- 
lishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force 
of his being such an agent, he is possessed of a taste for effec- 
tive work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a sense of 
the merit of serviceability or efificiency and of the demerit of 
futility, waste, or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity 
may be called the instinct of workmanship." ['99, p. 15.] 

Such a tendency surely comes to exist in very many men 
under the ordinary circumstances of life, and may properly be 
used in economics as a postulate, but it is a complex of several 
sets of original connections and of their guidance by material 
and human surroundings. Chief among the former are the 
tendency to multiform physical and multifonn mental activity 



144 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

just described, the satisfyingness of mental control and of 
human approval, and annoyance at being thwarted and at 
human contempt. Amongst the guiding factors are objects 
to be dupHcated, ends to be gained and the human customs of 
approving certain products of intellect or skill and condemning 
others. Thus the child who fumbles with blocks, content with 
producing any effect, almost universally comes to be a boy 
who is satisfied by only such effects as approximate an ideal of 
his own. 

The same sort of account may be given of the "desire for 
excellence for its own sake" of which Alfred Marshall says : — 

"... The desire for excellence for its own sake grad- 
uates down from that of a Newton, or a Stradivarius, to that 
of the fisherman who, even when no one is looking and he is 
not in a hurry, delights in handling his craft well, and in the 
fact that she is well built and responds promptly to his guid- 
ance ... A large part of the demand for the most highly 
skilled professional services and the best work of the mechani- 
cal artisan, arises from the delight that people have in the train- 
ing of their own faculties, and in exercising them by the aid of 
the most delicately adjustable and responsive implements." 
['90, vol. I, p. I47-] 

This potent mover of men's economic and recreative activi- 
ties has its tap-root in the instinct of multiform mental and 
physical activity. 

PLAY 

No doubt much of the behavior called play represents orig- 
inal bonds between certain situations and certain responses. 
Play, in any one of the common meanings of the word, is more 
original, less a product of training, than the occupations which 
are distinguished as work. But, as has repeatedly been the 
case with other tendencies, the vague assumption of a tendency 
to manifest, apart from training, more or less of the behavior 
called play, needs specification. The majority of the disputes 
about the service of play in education hark back to vagueness 
in defining what play is to be taken to mean ; and in deciding 



MINOR MOVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS 145 

which elements in it are original and which are learned. It 
is therefore well to remind oneself first of all of what the orig- 
inal tendencies to play are not. 

There is no original tendency to act uselessly rather than 
usefully, or to make-believe rather than to accept matters of 
fact. Nor is there a full set of tendencies to mock in a sportive 
way all the separate behavior-series of feeding, hunting, seeking 
shelter, running away, and so on which have been listed in 
this and the previous chapters. Man has not two original na- 
tures — one matter of fact, the other playful, — from one to 
the other of which he shifts by inner magic. 

The majority of the original tendencies from which human 
play develops are not peculiar to play, but originate serious 
activities as well. Such are manipulation, facial expression, 
vocalization, multiform mental activity and multiform physical 
activity. The same original tendency, manipulation, is the root 
of making mud-pies and apple-pies. Vocalization produces 
matter-of-fact, utilitarian speech and playful screams or songs. 
To explain the greater part of original play, no additions what- 
ever to the account of original nature so far given are needed. 

Another fraction of original play is accounted for by the 
fact, which was mentioned in Chapter II and which will be 
discussed later, that the original tendencies so far described 
for convenience as if the)' manifested themselves in distinct 
unitary situation-response series, do not in life come thus neatly 
separated. Any situation in life may be enormously compli- 
cated, so that a mixture from responses of, say, curiosity, hunt- 
ing, kindliness, and manipulation may be its result. A two- 
year-old child may be to a six-year-old child, at one and the 
same time, a novelty, a small object passing him, a fellow-man, 
and a stimulus to secondary connections, and so may be stared 
at, run after, patted and felt of. So the six-)^ear-old may not 
hunt and subdue, nor feed and protect, but, as we say, 'play with' 
the baby. Any situation in life may be only a fragment — in 
the artificial life of civilization, a mutilation — of any of the 
total situations to which original nature is previously adapted. 

10 



146 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Consequently, it may produce only a fragment of the response 
which the total situation would have produced. A dig in the 
ribs, unpreceded by threatening approach and unaccompanied by 
projected head, angry face, growling and snarls, must call forth 
a different response from that which it would call forth if with 
these accompaniments. 

In a similar way the 'mutilation' of the conditions within 
the organism may give to a tendency an appearance of being 
playful beyond its deserts. If infants from a year to three 
years of age lived in such a community as a human settlement 
seems likely to have been twenty-five thousand years ago, their 
restless examination of small objects would perhaps seem as 
utilitarian as their father's hunting. 

There are left, as possible instincts of play proper, not 
already listed, the special tendencies to hunt for hunting's sake 
in ways notably different from the 'real' hunt ; to fight for 
fighting's sake in ways notably different from the 'real' fight; 
to fondle and pet in ways notably different from the 'real' 
mothering. It may be, that is, that in these cases nature pro- 
vides preparation for food-getting, for the struggle for females 
and for motherhood by connecting special play-responses in 
early life to situations like, though not identical with, those 
to be met in earnest. Whether the chasing, fleeing, catching, 
wrestling, jumping upon domestic animals and other children, 
fisticuffs, hair-pulling, and the like, and the holding, fondling 
and petting babies, dolls, pets and toys, by the young, require 
such special instincts or are explainable as the 'real' instincts, 
modified by complication or distortion of the situations and by 
training, I shall not try to decide. In any case, in playful 
hunting, fighting, mothering, fleeing, home-making and the 
like, training early permeates and overlays man's original 
nature. 

RANDOM MOVEMENTS 

Of the 'varied reactions' which were discussed in the pre- 
ceding chapter, some have not been shown to be definitely bound 



MINOR MOVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS 147 

to any one particular situation. Of the minor bodily move- 
ments of vocalization, visual exploration, manipulation and 
doing something" to have something happen described in this 
chapter, many seem to be evoked by merely l3eing" alive, awake, 
energetic and in the presence of something or other. Of the 
sprawlings, kickings and finger movements of the first four 
months, man}^ seem, at least to ordinary observation, to come 
for no particular reason. 

Such facts have led to the assumption that a smaller or 
larger fraction of human behavior is 'undetermined,' 'random,' 
'diffuse,' or 'spasmodic' Baldwin expressed the orthodox 
view of twenty-five years ago when he wrote: "Such reactions 
which are simply the discharges, the outbursts of the organism, 
independent of definite external stimulation are called spontan- 
eous. So the incessant random movements of infants and the 
extraordinary rubber-like activity of the year-old child." ['91, 
P- 303-] The following quotations from recent standard 
books show that this view is still current, though tempered 
somewhat in its expression. In speaking of the movements 
which an infant makes when "a bright and noisy rattle is pre- 
sented to the notice of a child," Angell writes : "At first these 
movements are inevitably spasmodic, vague and uncoordinated. 
They simply suggest, as we observe them, some sort of explo- 
sion in the motor centres." ['04, p. 349.] Pillsbury ['08, p. 
155] says: "A certain number of responses are predetermined 
at birth by the racial acquirements of instinct, but in man and 
the higher animals a vastly greater number of movements are 
possible from the side of the nervous connections than are fixed 
or predetermined." Colvin writes, with similar caution, that: 
"The higher forms also possess at birth certain diffuse and un- 
coordinated reactions that seem to serve no immediate purpose, 
since they are not definite enough to bring about any helpful 
adjustments. An example of these latter reactions may be 
found in the ill-directed and seemingly wasteful movements of 
the infant, who on seeing a brilliantly colored ball suspended 
before it, makes a multitude of movements, none of which 



148 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

may accomplish the result of obtaining the ball. The visual 
stimulus of the colored ball sets up in this particular instance 
a nervous activity that finds no direct and definite discharge, 
spreading itself over the entire nervous system. . . ." 
['II, p. 9.] 

Early in this volume it was shown that human behavior 
could not be random in the strict sense. Nothing in the world 
is so. Nor do these writers intend to give that impression. 
They do, however, give, and probably intend to give, the 
impression that irrelevant internal happenings, casualties of the 
nervous system, play a considerable role in causing the variety 
of human behavior. The words spasmodic, explosive, not fixed, 
not predetermined, diffuse, uncoordinated and indefinite also 
give — ^whether by the writers' intention or not — the impres- 
sion that, in the case of many situations, any selection from a 
very great many conduction units is as likely to be set in action 
as any other selection, the external situation itself having no 
appreciable original bonds. 

The words random, diffuse, indefinite and the like are so 
very economical as descriptions of certain features of varied 
response, general mental and physical activity, and the early 
infantile gymnastics that anybody is tempted to use them and 
is easily excusable. It is also a delicate task to decide whether 
the results of the irrelevant internal happenings are consider- 
able or inconsiderable, whether one should give the impression 
that one situation can provoke 'any' selection from 'a very great 
number' of conduction units or 'certain' selections from 
'many,' — whether an external situation has no appreciable 
bonds or no emphatic bonds. But I cannot avoid the conclu- 
sion that such statements as those quoted above, and such as 
I have myself been guilty of in earlier writings, do mislead. 
The 'rubber-like activity of the year-old child' is, I believe, in- 
stigated by the appeal of external objects and directed step by 
step by the satisfactions which arise from specific sights, 
sounds, touches and movements. The baby's response to the 
rattle dangled before it does not suggest to me an explosion in 



MINOR MOVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS I49 

the motor centres, but only a rich and changing, but perfectly 
definable, response-group which does have a constant relation 
to that sort of a situation. The response to the rattle seems 
vague if it is compared with some single stereotyped instinct; 
but it seems definable, indeed very limited, if it is compared 
with all the baby's repertory or with what an actual brain ex- 
plosion might be supposed to produce. For example, let the 
four-months-old child be presented with the rattle, the breast or 
bottle, a sharp slap, or a rhythmic rocking. The four responses 
would be confused by no one. Or consider that it never does 
what it should do from sheer diffusion of the conduction. No 
child ever responds to a dangling rattle by one-tenth or 
even one-twentieth of his total repertory. 

After all, while the more variegated and unstable connec- 
tions are certainly not 'fixed' or 'predetermined' in the sense 
that each situation is married to some one response, their 
divorce being a rare and serious matter, no more are they dif- 
fuse or indefinite in any strict sense of those terms. Whatever 
use rhetorical necessities may direct of the phrases 'random re- 
sponses,' 'general mental and physical activity,' 'varied reac- 
tion' and the like, the student of human nature must bear in 
mind just what the peculiar limited randomness, generality, or 
variety is. What it is, I have tried to describe and illustrate 
in the course of this inventory. 



chapter xt 
The Emotions and Their Expression 

difficulties in identifying and studying 
emotional states 

It has been noted from time to time in the course of this 
inventory of man's original nature that certain situations arouse 
in the neurones responses productive of the inner states of fear, 
elation, depression, and the like. Rather scant justice has so 
far been done to the problems of what particular neurone action 
of this sort, and so what inner emotional state, any given sit- 
uation will originally provoke; and to the general problem of 
the nature of these neurone-actions, and their original status. 

Theoretically we could parallel our inventory of the bonds 
between what may happen to a man and what he will, apart 
from training, do in response thereto in the way of running, 
smiling, crying, striking, being satisfied or annoyed and the 
like, by an inventory of the bonds between what may happen 
to him and what his neurones will do in the way of action pro- 
ductive of excitement, calm, elation, depression, tenderness, 
fear and the like. But practically, although more attention 
has been given by psychologists to the latter than to the former 
division of man's instinctive equipment, such an inventory is 
very unsatisfactory. Since some of the reasons for its un- 
satisfactoriness are bound up with the general problem of the 
nature and original status of the neurone-actions concerned, the 
concrete problem of a detailed inventory may be held over 
until certain facts about the general problem have been 
reviewed. 

The neurone actions concerned with the emotion? have been 

ISO 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION I5I 

asserted by James ['93, Chapter XXV]* and Lange ['85] to 
be in large measure secondary results of bodily disturbances 
outside the brain. Such bodily responses as the secretion of 
tears, the rush of blood to the head, or the fluttering- of the 
heart are supposed by the James-Lange theory to react upon 
the neurones to produce conditions in them which, in part, ac- 
count for tender, angry and fearsome feelings, f 

Opponents of the James-Lange theory, so far as they are 
clear about the neurone-actions to which original emotional 
states of consciousness are due, maintain that they may be 
caused directly by the situation — sensed object or thought-of 
fact — without the arousal beforehand of any response outside 
the brain. This conflict of opinions remains unsettled. 

The significance of this disagreement for us lies in the 
proof it gives that almost nothing is known of the neurone- 
action concerned in producing any emotion. If men knew 
what the neurone-action was in any case, they could easily 
decide experimentally whether, in that case, it did or did not 
have a certain condition outside of the brain as its antecedent. 
As it is, they can only call such the x producing fear, the y 
producing tenderness, or the 2 producing elation. 

But the fear, tenderness or elation itself is definable only 
as that which a man feels when he is in certain situations or 
as that which a man feels when he makes certain responses. 
In spite of thousands of pages of introspective analysis we are 
always brought around in the end to the statement that, say, 
fear is 'what I experience when something is there, which other 
men or I, myself, would say caused me to fear,' or Vhat I expe- 

*The theory described here was first broached by James in an article 
published in Mind, in 1884, and by Lange independently in '85. James' 
discussion is repeated in Chapter XXV of the Principles of Psychology. 
Lange's discussion is available in the translation by H. Kurella ['87], 
entitled Ueber GemUthsbewegungen. Kurella does not give the title of the 
Danish original. 

tFor a conservative account of what little is known of fhe internaJ 
bodily conditions which go with, and perhaps are the causes of, certain 
conditions of the neurones productive of the feelings of excitement, anx- 
iety, anger and the like, see Ladd and Woodworth ['11, pp. 500-528]. 



152 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

rience when I honestly report myself in words to be in terror, 
or make some grosser response to the same effect.' 

This definition or identification of an inner conscious emo^ 
tional state as the unknown quantity of an unknown stuff that 
is produced by a certain situation or evidenced by a certain 
response may, of course, be delayed by comparing and con- 
trasting the unknown with other unknowns of the same class. 
Thus fear may be defined as a shocking, depressed state of 
mind, or as the opposite of confidence and courage, or as 
more like grief than anger is. But a demand for identifica- 
tion of these means of definition themselves leads finally always 
to the provoking situation or the attendant response. 

So in a circle one goes from objective situation to objective 
response without laying one's grasp on anything to think about 
as fear, or tenderness, or elation, save the state of mind one has 
as a sequent of a certain situation or as a precursor of a certain 
response. 

Just as the neurone-action productive of fear is the x, pro- 
ducing fear, so fear is the Xi produced by such and such situa- 
tions or the X2 productive of such and such verbal report or 
grosser response. If a thousand men of science had observed 
all the millions of cases of this inner fear that have happened in 
the last ten years, they would still be unable to do any more 
with it than to define the objective conditions and consequences 
of its appearance. The cavalier treatment accorded to these 
states of consciousness and to the conditions in the brain to 
which they are due, in the case of fear and anger, and their 
total neglect in the case of curiosity, play, mastery and submis- 
sion, motherly behavior, kindliness and other original tenden- 
cies, is then in part justifiable.* 

■''Tlie reader who has accepted the verbal assertions of the traditional 
analytic psychology at their face value may suspect that I have been 
unfair in reducing the traditional descriptions of 'emotions' to compar- 
isons or contrasts inter se and to references to the situations which cause 
them or the varieties of bodily behavior which accompany them. He 
may retain a conviction that some direct apprehension of the nature of 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION I53 

It would, perhaps, not be wholly justifiable. For what a 
man reports as his emotions are signs of the existence of neu- 
rone-actions which, though unknown so far as concerns their 
own make-up, are known, so far as concerns their connections 
and their meaning. The less easily observable effects on the 
brain productive of the states of consciousness called emotions 
can enter into connection with other facts, serve as intermedi- 
ate links between a situation and further responses to it, and 
become themselves situations to which responses are bound. 
They, or the feelings going with them, can lead to attitudes 
and actions toward situations — can stand for or 'mean' various 
states of affairs. Just as the sound, heard or imagined, of the 
word 'run' can represent or mean certain facts, so the feelings 
of fear can represent certain facts — certain attitudes and possi- 
bilities of the man's behavior. The less easily observable ef- 
fects of situations on the brain, whether they parallel so-called 
sensations or so-called emotions, serve as means of connection 
and have representative value. Suppose, for example, that 
when I think I have lost a thousand-dollar bill, there occurs a 
'less easily observable effect in my brain' producing the same 
feeling that was a part of my condition when clutched by the 
neck in the dark, but without the bodily start, jump and 
trembling. This 'less easily observable effect on my brain' may 
connect with its former associates, leading me to call my pres- 
ent condition by the same name as that given the previous total 
condition by those around me: it may connect with associates 
of all sorts leading me to regard whatever causes it as 'fearful' 
or 'dangerous.' 

Just as the fact that the 'less easily observable effects on 
the brain' due to light vibrations of different wave-lengths are 
different, gives a means of convenient ordering and planful 
representation of certain facts of nature, so the fact that the 
'less easily observable effects of the brain' of jumping tigers, 

the feeling of fear or anger or scorn is possessed and communicated by 
psychologists. This conviction can hardly remain in any matter-of-fact 
student who will re-read the descriptions written by experts in such 
supposedly direct apprehension of conscious states. 



154 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

of wailing babies, and of scornful looks are different, gives a 
means of convenient ordering and planful representation of 
certain other facts of nature. 

The amount of value of the 'emotions' as centers of con- 
nections or carriers of meaning is of course far less than that 
of 'sensations,' but they possess the possibility of the same 
sort of value. Since the use of the emotions in this way is 
chiefly a matter of acquisition, further discussion of this topic 
belorigs to a later volume on the Psychology of Learning. 

mcdougall's inventory of original tendencies to 
emotional states 

I am unable to satisfy myself which particular x's,, y's, and 
2's of the emotional states would, by original nature, appear in 
response to the concrete particular situations of life so as to 
give an inventory of original bonds in this field that seems 
suitable to the purposes of this volume. For the sake of those 
who feel that they know just what inner states are meant by 
the words 'fear,' 'wonder,' 'tender emotion,' and the like, the 
inventory of McDougall — an able psychologist who is specially 
attentive to just this problem — is summarized here, though to 
me it seems to make little advance beyond common knowledge 
toward prophecy of what men will feel apart from training. 

McDougall finds that the original responses of inner emo- 
tional states are seven in number — fear, disgust, wonder, anger, 
subjection or negative self-feeling, elation or positive self- 
feeling, and tender emotion. "From these seven primary emo- 
tions together with feelings of pleasure and pain (and per- 
haps also feelings of excitement and of depression) are com- 
pounded all, or almost all, the affective states that are popularly 
recognized as emotions, and for which human speech has defi- 
nite names" ['08, p. 81 f.]. 

The situations which originally provoke these seven re- 
sponses are: — 

For fear. — "A variety of objects and sense impressions/* 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION 1 55 

which in the case of man "it is difficult to discover." "In 
most young children . . . any sudden loud noise . . . and 
all through life such noise remains for many of us the surest 
and most frequent excitant of the instinct." "Other children, 
while still in arms show fear if held too loosely when carried 
downstairs, or if the arms that hold them are suddenly low- 
ered. In some, intense fear is excited on their first introduc- 
tion at close quarters to a dog or cat, no matter how quiet 
and well-behaved the animal may be; and some of us continue 
all through life to experience a little thrill of fear whenever 
a dog runs out and barks at our heels, though we may never 
have received any hurt from an animal and may have perfect 
confidence that no hurt is likely to be done us. . . . In 
other persons, again, fear is excited by the noise of a high 
wind, and though they may be in a solidly built house that has 
weathered a hundred storms, they will walk restlessly to and 
fro throughout every stormy night ... Of all the excitants 
of this instinct the most interesting, and the most difficult to 
understand as regards its mode of operation, is the unfamiliar 
or strange as such. Whatever is totally strange, whatever is 
violently opposed to the accustomed and familiar, is apt to 
excite fear both in men and animals, if only it is capable of at- 
tracting their attention." 

For disgust. — "Substances that excite the instinct in virtue 
of their odor or taste, substances which in the main are 
noxious and evil-tasting" and "the contact of slimy and slip- 
pery substances with the skin." 

For wonder. — "Any object similar to, yet perceptibly 
different from, familiar objects habitually noticed." 

For anger, — "It has no specific object or objects the per- 
ception of which" provokes it. The situation which originally 
arouses it is "any obstruction to the activity to which the 
creature is impelled by any of the other instincts." 

For elation or positive self-feeling. — This "is only brought 
into play by the presence of spectators." "The situation that 
more particularly excites this instinct is the presence of specta- 
tors to whom one feels oneself for any reason, or in any way, 
superior." 

For subjection or negative self-feeling. — McDougall does 
not state what the stimulus is, but by inference it would be the 
presence of spectators to whom one feels inferior. 

For tender emotion. — "The child's expression of pam, fear, 



156 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

or distress of any kind, especially the child's cry of distress; 
further . . . the cry, not only of one's own offspring-, but 
of any child." By association by similarity, other objects such 
as a happy but frail child, "any very young animal especially 
if in distress," and the like may directly arouse this response. 
When a situation contains elements which arouse two or 
more of these primary responses the two or more compound to 
l)ecome "mixed, secondary or complex emotions." "The great 
variety of our emotional states may be properly regarded as the 
compounding of" these seven primary responses. This is 
"largely, though not wholly due to the existence of sentiments," 
a sentiment being an "organized system of emotional ten- 
dencies centered about some object." "Since the primary emo- 
tions may be combined in a large number of different ways, 
and since the primaries that enter into the composition of a sec- 
ondary emotion may be present in any different degrees of 
intensity, the whole range of complex emotions presents an 
indefinitely large number of qualities that shade imperceptibly 
into one another without sharp dividing lines. The names 
provided by common speech designate merely a certain limited 
number of the most prominent of these complexes." 

Admiration is essentially a compound of "wonder and 
negative self-feeling or the emotion of submission" and so 
should be excited originally by "any object similar to, yet 
perceptibly different from, familiar objects habitually noticed" 
when other human beings to whom one felt oneself inferior 
were present. 

Gratitude "is a binary compound of tender emotion and 
negative feeling" and so should be originally the emotional re- 
sponse to a "child's expression of pain, fear or distress of any 
kind" when other human beings to whom one felt oneself in- 
ferior were present. 

Scorn is a compound of disgust and anger ("when an object 
excites' our disgust, and at the same time our anger, the emo- 
tion we experience is scorn"), and so should be the original 
response to "substances that excite the instinct in virtue of 
their odour or taste" and "the contact of slimy and slippery 
substances with the skin" provided that there is "any obstruc- 
tion to the activity to which the creature is impelled by any 
of the other instincts." 

Loathing is a compound of disgust and fear and so should 
be the original response to a situation like that just described, 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION 157 

but with the second feature replaced by a "sudden loud noise," 
"a high wind," "the unfamiliar or strange as such," or the 
like. 

In the case of Envy McDougall "would suggest that it is a 
binary compound of negative self- feeling (that is, subjection) 
and of anger." He apparently judges that a certain amount 
of reflective consideration is necessary to the production of 
envy, so that he would perhaps not claim that the sheer pres- 
ence of spectators to whom one feels inferior phi's an obstruc- 
tion to our own activity would evoke envy. 

Reproach "seems to be a fusion of anger and of tender 
emotion." 

Anxiety is anticipatory pain mingled with tender emotion. 

Jealousy is a compound of anger and tender emotion under 
some painful check. 

Vengeful emotion is essentially a fusion of anger and 
wounded self- feeling. 

Bashfulness is a compound of elation and subjection, but 
"a struggle rather than a fusion." , 

Shame "is bashfulness qualified by the pain of baffled positive 
self-feeling (i. e., elation), whose impulse is strong and persist- 
ent owing to the fact that the emotion is excited within the 
system of the self-regarding sentiment." 

THE RELATION OF EMOTIONS TO THE MOVEMENTS WHICH 
EXPRESS THEM 

The emotions (or the hidden conditions of the organism 
paralleling the emotions) have a further interest in connection 
with the origin of the customary and misleading psychology 
of certain instincts. Since these internal responses of the 
brain itself are, for others than the one making them, hard to 
observe, reward and punish, they have to be controlled indi- 
rectly by rewarding or punishing the obvious bodily conditions 
with which they are commonly found. As a result, they may 
stay as fairly stable cores in the total responses of fear, anger, 
or disgust, while the more obvious running, hiding, striking, 
biting, spitting and shrinking are omitted or variously modified. 
Thus arose the traditional, but perverse, description of such 



15^^ THE ORHIINAI. NATURE OF MAN 

sorts of hcliavior as 'states of consciousness whicli are ex- 
pressed hy bodily activities.' The original nalnrc of man is 
pictured as a set of tendencies for varions silnations to arouse, 
first in time and llrst in importrmce, the feeling's — fear, anger, 
disgust, interest, pity, love, and tht like. Each of these feel- 
ings then receives by heredity, or seeks out more or less mirac- 
ulously, certain bodily movements to go with it. The service 
of these movements is to express or make known the existence 
of their respective feelings. 

'i'his de.scri])tion is perverse through and through. The 
arousal of the feelings of fear, anger and the like is first 
neither in time nor in importance. IMie more observable liod- 
ily movements do not come as expressions of them, but as re- 
sponses toward the outside siluation that started the behavior- 
scries in ((uestion. The service of the Ixjdily movements of 
facial ex|)rcssion, cries, tears and the like is to mahc a differ- 
ence in the hehovior of other men, or occasionally of other 
animals, or in the responding person himself. In the course 
of the modification of the behavior of the other human beings 
who witness the cries, tears, etc., they may think of the con- 
scious state of the waller, but that is a secondary by-product of 
the process. 

The error just described has been extended, though at the 
same time softened by vagueness, in the doctrine of a general 
Instinct of Self-expression. Kirkpatrick ['03, Chapter XIIT] 
has affirmed definitely, what doubtless many students of human 
nature are inclined to believe, that man originally expresses 
his mental states to others of the same species and takes pleas- 
ure in doing so. This is a misleading statement. Ft is true 
that many conditions in a human being, such as hunger, bodily 
])ain or disgust, arc connected with facial movements, cries and 
gestures which an ex|X^rienced human being can interpret and 
to which an inexperienced human being responds adaptively. 
But it is not true that there is a general tendency to so reveal 
any mental state whatsoever. Love affairs are concealed. 
Shy behavior ronceals in part whatever fear, affection, hatred 



TllK KMOTIONS AND Tlll.lK I A I'in'.SSrON 1 50 

or disgust may he prosoul. Tlic tronil)lin.<;' and paralysis of 
fear may 'conccar an iutcuso dcsiro (o niu away. Wiiotlicr 
one sees colors noiinally or as tlu' color l)iiiid do, wIuMIkt one 
is lliinkiiii;- of six or sixteen, in fael the threat majority of in- 
dividual peeidiarities in perception and thouj^ht which make up 
perhaps nine tenths of human mental states today, are not, by 
orij^'inal natuie„ expressed at all save in alleraJions of the 
neurones unseen by others of the same species. 

Common as is the tendency to speak out what is in one's 
mind, it can he explained as the result of learned hahits initiated 
by the instinct of vocali/ation and selected )))' reas(Mi of their 
ulterior salisfyint^icss. Man talks in order to t;et the satis- 
faction of mental control, material favors, notice, approv.al and 
otlicr j;-oods. (|uite irrespet:tivc of spreadinj^- information about 
himself. A little later he talks to himself or aloud partly also 
in order to think. Let the others of the same s])ecies refuse 
his verbal re(|uests, scorn his autobioj^raphy and let his nuis- 
u\^s> t^row richer and more lluent when made silently, and he 
becomes taciturn. 

What orij^inal lunnan natme shows is not a general ten- 
dency to self-revelation, but ;i multitude of special ri'sponscs 
by facial movements, }.;estures, cries and <^ross bodily movc- 
menls which act as potent situations to evoke attention and 
various adaptive responses fiom others of the species. 'These 
responses by the others are not simply awarenesses (^f the state 
of mind of the Hrst party. They vary accordinj^- to whether 
the second party has the motherinj;-. friendly, mastering-, sub- 
missive or other tendency actin<^- at the same tinu-. Nor arc 
they primarily awarenesses of the lirst party's states of mind. 
On the contrary the primary thiuf^- is to chase the foe who (lees, 
to cuddle the infant who wails. S(> mammals and birds, who 
show no sipi'iis of a }.';eneral appreciation of the states of mind 
of their kind, yet respond adaptively to them.''' The so-called 

^Craiy has found tlinl lli(> instindivo uses df llic voiro I)y pifsfcnns arc 
potent means of social loiiUol; Ord.ilil noUs in llic case of flic feeding 
of younp tlial, "with all rlu- birds observed, the ones that c.dlud tlir loud- 
est and most fic(|ucMtly g(jl the most food." f'o8, p. .{('t 1 



l6o THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

expressive movements are of great importance as means of 
social cooperation and control, but, apart from learning, they 
act by provoking motor responses directly, not by exciting" 
awarenesses of the mental states of others. 

THE ORIGINAL BONDS OF THE EXPRESSIVE MOVEMENTS 

Some of these special responses by facial movements and 
cries, such as the scowl and snarl of angry behavior, the up- 
turned nose of disgust, the stare of attempted mastery, the 
averted glance at the sight of a fearful object, the cooing of 
motherly behavior and the lowered eyes of submission, have 
been set forth in connection with their several situations. But 
in the case of others, including some of the most notable, it 
is very hard to discover to what situations they are by original 
nature bound. We do not know just what situations originally 
provoke smiling, laughing, crying, weeping, blushing, frown- 
ing, and pouting, in spite of the fact that these responses 
have been made the subject of investigation by Darwin ['72] 
and by many able and industrious students following him. 

Since these problems are of comparatively little moment to 
our general purpose, it will be best to spend the space that is 
available in illustrating the treatment of one of them rather 
than in a necessarily superficial and dogmatic rehearsal of the 
probable answers to them all. For this purpose I choose 
Laughing. 

Darwin's description of the nature of this response is the 
most instructive for quotation. He says : 

"The sound of laughter is produced by a deep inspiration 
followed by short, interrupted, spasmodic contractions of the 
chest, and especially of the diaphragm. Hence we hear of 
'laughter holding both his sides.' From the shaking of the 
body, the head nods to and fro. The lower jaw often quivers 
up and down, as is likewise the case with some species of bab- 
oons, when they are much pleased. 

During laughter the mouth is opened more or less widely, 
with the corners drawn much backwards, as well as a little 
upwards; and the upper lip is somewhat raised. The draw- 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION l6l 

ing back of the corners is best seen in moderate laughter, and 
especially in a broad smile — the latter epithet showing hov/ 
the mouth is widened, . . . Dr. Duchenne repeatedly insists 
that, under the emotion of joy, the mouth is acted on exclusively 
by the great zygomatic muscles, which serve to draw the cor- 
ners backwards and upwards; but judging- from the manner 
in which the upper teeth are always exposed during laughter 
and broad smiling, as well as from my owrf sensations, I cannot 
doubt that some of the muscles running to the upper lip are 
likewise brought into moderate action. . . . 

By the drawing backwards and upwards of the corners of 
the mouth, through the contraction of the great zygomatic mus- 
cles, and by the raising of the upper lip, the cheeks are 
drawn upwards. Wrinkles are thus formed under the eyes, 
and, with old people, at their outer ends; and these are highly 
characteristic of laughter or smiling. As a gentle smile in- 
creases into a strong one, or into a laugh, every one may feel 
and see, if he will attend to his own sensations and look at 
himself in a mirror, that as the upper lip is drawn up and the 
lower orbiculars contract, the wrinkles in the lower eyelids and 
those beneath the eyes are much strengthened or increased. At 
the same time, as I have repeatedly observed, the eyebrows 
are slightly lowered, which shows that the upper as well 
as the lower orbiculars contract at least to some degree, 
though this passes unperceived, as far as our sensations are 
concerned. . . . 

The tendency in the zygomatic muscles to contract under 
pleasurable emotions is shown by a curious fact, communicated 
to me by Dr. Browne, with respect to patients suffering from 
general paralysis of the insane. *In this malady there is almost 
invariably optimism — delusions as to wealth, rank, grandeur — 
insane joyousness, benevolence, and profusion, -while its very 
earliest physical symptom is trembling at the corners of the 
mouth and at the outer corners of the eyes. This is a well- 
recognized fact. Constant tremulous agitation of the inferior 
palpebral and great zygomatic muscles is pathognomic of the 
earlier stages of general paralysis. The countenance has a 
pleased and benevolent expression. As the disease advances 
other muscles become involved, but until complete fatuity is 
reached, the prevailing expression is that of feeble benevolence.' 

As in laughing and broadly smiling the cheeks and upper 
lip are much raised, the nose appears to be shortened, and the 
skin on the bridge becomes finely wrinkled in transverse lines, 



l62 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

with other obhque longitudinal lines on the sides. The upper 
front teeth are commonly exposed. A well-marked naso-labial 
fold is formed, which runs from the wing of each nostril to the 
corner of the mouth ; and this fold is often double in old persons. 

A bright and sparkling eye is as characteristic of a pleased 
or amused state of mind as is the retraction of the corners of 
the mouth and upper lip with the wrinkles thus produced. 
Even the eyes of microcephalous idiots, who are so degraded 
that they never learn to speak, brighten slightly when they are 
pleased. Under extreme laughter the eyes are too much suf- 
fused with tears to sparkle; but the moisture squeezed out of 
the glands during moderate laughter or smiling may aid in 
giving them lustre ; though this must be of altogether subordin- 
ate importance, as they become dull from grief, though they 
are then often moist. Their brightness seems to be chiefly due 
to their tenseness, owing to the contraction of the orbicular 
muscles and to the pressure of the raised cheeks. But, accord- 
ing to Dr. Piderit, who has discussed this point more fully than 
any other writer, the tenseness may be largely attributed to 
the eyeballs becoming filled with blood and other fluids, from 
the acceleration of the circulation, consequent on the excitement 
of pleasure. . . . 

A graduated series can be followed from violent to moderate 
laughter, to a broad smile, to a gentle smile, and to the ex- 
pression of mere cheerfulness. During excessive laughter the 
whole body is often thrown backward and shakes, or is almost 
convulsed ; the respiration is much disturbed ; the head and face 
become gorged with blood, with the veins distended; and the 
orbicular muscles are spasmodically contracted in order to 
protect the eyes. . . . 

Excessive laughter, as before remarked, graduates into 
moderate laughter. In this latter case the muscles round the 
eyes are much less contracted, and there is little or no frowning. 
Between a gentle laugh and a broad smile there is hardly any 
difference, excepting that in smiling no reiterated sound is 
uttered, though a single rather strong expiration, or slight noise 
— a rudiment of a laugh — may often be heard at the commence- 
ment of a smile. On a moderate smiling countenance the con- 
traction of the upper orbicular muscles can still just be traced 
by a sHght lowering of the eyebrows. The contraction of the 
lower orbicular and palpebral muscles is much plainer, and 
is shown by the wrinkling of the lower eyelids and of the skin 
beneath them, together with a slight drawing up of the upper 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION 163 

lip. From the broadest smile we pass by the finest steps into 
the gentlest one. In this latter case the features are moved in a 
much less degree, and much more slowly, and the mouth Is 
kept closed. The curvature of the naso-labial furrow is also 
slightly different in the two cases. We thus see that no abrupt 
line of demarcation can be drawn between the movement of the 
features during the most violent laughter and a very faint 
smile." ['72, pp. 200-208, passim.] 

Hall and Allin ['97] emphasize the variations that may oc- 
cur in the detailed nature, relative intensity and order of ap- 
pearance of the brightening of the eyes, drawing up and back 
of the corners of the mouth, opening of the mouth, repeated 
brief contractions of the muscles of the chest and diaphragm 
and vocalization which are the essentials of natural laughter. 
Thus : — 

"In our returns laughter began in 71 cases with the eyes, 
and in 51 cases with the mouth. The eyes are said to grow 
bright, glitter, sparkle (involving a tension of all the muscles 
of the bulbus), to twinkle (rapid lid movements), to dance (ir- 
regular or oscillatory movements of the recti), the mouth 
stretches, corners are drawn upward or sometimes downward, 
very often twitch or quiver. The mouth commonly opens, ex- 
cept in the simper, when it is nearly or quite closed. The lips 
are said to curl. In a few cases the laugh begins with dimples 
in the cheeks, and in others the muscles just below the ear 
move. In still other cases the first symptom is the throwing 
back of the head, and in others a snort or chuckle. Of the 
body movements about two-thirds assert that the shoulders, 
and one-third that the diaphragin, first move. ..." 

"The vocal expressions of laughter are extremely diverse. 
The sound most generally emitted is described as he, he, passing 
over to ha, ha. But almost every kind of noise occurs. F., 
17. Is said to "bray somewhat like a donkey." F., 15. 
"Cackles." M., 28. Makes a loud guttural "yock." M., 
10. Laughs "somewhat like a rooster." M., 21. "Snorts." 
F., 15. "Grunts like a pig." F., 20. Laughs without vocal- 
ization, but with a noise like the emission of steam. The laugh 
of Chinamen is described as a chattering sound. One laughs 
"deep down in his chest;" another "laughs up among his 
teeth ;" another is said to have a laugh which is said to be like 
a "fog horn;" another "rumbles." F., 17. "Yells and 



164 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OP MAN 

shrieks." F., 10. Laughs with a "simmering laugh." 
M., 16. With an "explosive staccato sound." Some make no 
noise at all, others sob or make a noise that seems like crying. 
Some are said to snarl, others make a very soft te-he, others a 
loud ho, ho, three are said to "neigh like a horse," some only 
gasp, some laugh in a very high, some in a low key, some make 
noises said to be indescribable or between a laugh and a cry. 
Every vowel and most consonants are used in our returns in 
efforts to describe noises. Some "laugh like parrots, crows, 
peacocks, sheep, goats;" some make a "scraping, rasping, 
throaty noise," and some a very musical tone ; some go up and 
some go down the scale. Other laughs are described as "tse, 
tse; uckle-uckle; hep, hep; haw-haw, wah, wah; iff, iff; hickle, 
hickle; kee, kee; gah, gah." ['97, pp. 4-6, passim.] 

The need of impartial observation and experiment to dis- 
cover just what the original nature of man is finds brilliant 
illustration in the case of laughing. No one knows with surety 
what man would laugh at apart from training, although defi^- 
nitions and theories of the laughable have been devised by 
one after another gifted student of human nature, from Aris- 
totle to Bergson. 

Indeed, no one of these theories has succeeded in reporting 
what situations do provoke man to laughter either by nature 
or by training. Thus the sense of superiority theory — "that 
the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising 
from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by 
comparison with the inferiority of others or our own formerly" 
(Hobbes) — fails to cover the most important case of all — the 
fluent, semi-conscious laughter of healthy babies at play. Mr. 
J. L. Ford has restated the 'sense of superiority' theory in the 
more cautious and more matter-of-fact form that nine-tenths 
of the laughter of men is at real or acted or narrated disaster or 
misfortune, but the same objection holds. 

The theory that incongruity between one's thought and 
the object or between one's expectation from the situation and 
its actual behavior is the element to which laughter is the re- 
sponse has been upheld in various forms by Kant, Schopen- 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION 165 

hauer, Spencer and others, the foHowing being representative 
statements : 

"In the case of jokes (the art of which, just Hke music, 
should rather be reckoned as pleasant than beautiful) the play 
begins with the thoughts which together occupy the body, so 
far as they admit of sensible expression ; and as the Understand- 
ing stops suddenly short at this presentment, in which it does 
not find what it expected, we feel the effect of this slackening 
in the body by the oscillation of the organs, which promotes the 
restoration of equilibrium and has a favorable influence upon 
health. 

In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh 
there must be something absurd in which the Understanding, 
therefore, can find no satisfaction. LangJiter is an affection 
arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expecta- 
tion into nothing." [Kant, Kritik of Judgment, Bernard's 
translation, § 54, p. 223.] 

"Just that incongruity of perceptual and abstract knowl- 
edge ... is also the basis of a very noteworthy phenomenon 
which ... is absolutely peculiar to human nature and for 
which explanation after explanation has hitherto been attempted 
but always unsuccessfully. I refer to laughter. . . . 

Laughter arises always from no other fact than the imme- 
diately appreciated incongruity between a notion and the real 
objects which were thought by means of it, whatever the rela- 
tion be, and is itself nothing but the expression of this incon- 
gruity. . . . Every act of laughter arises therefore on the 
occasion of a paradoxical and so unexpected subsumption, re- 
gardless of whether this is expressed by words or acts. This 
is in brief the correct explanation of the laughable." [Schopen- 
hauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellmig, p. 70 of vol. 2 of 
the Brockhaus {'77) edition of his collected works.] 

Spencer notes that "laughter often occurs from extreme 
pleasure or from mere vivacity" and apparently allows that the 
sense of superiority (as by the humiliation of others) is a gen- 
eralization of certain conditions to laughter. The incongruity 
theory he modifies to the form that "laughter (at the incon- 
gruous) naturally results only when consciousness is unawares 
transferred from great things to small — only where there is 
what we may call a descending incongruity." [Essays: Scien- 



l66 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

tific, Political and Speculative (Second Series), American 
edition of 1864, p. 116.] 

Darwin was perhaps wiser in assuming that laughter is a 
development from smiling and is fundamentally attached to the 
same situations as smiling is, and that these are substantially- 
identical with satisfying states of affairs in general. 

"Laughter seems primarily to be the expression of mere 
joy or happiness. We clearly see this in children at play, who 
are almost incessantly laughing. With young persons past 
childhood, when they are in high spirits, there is always much 
meaningless laughter. The laughter of the gods is described 
by Homer as "the exuberance of their celestial joy after their 
daily banquet," A man smiles — and smiling, as we shall see. 
graduates into laughter — ^at meeting an old friend in the street, 
as he does at any trifling pleasure, such as smelling a sweet per- 
fume, Laura Bridgman, from her blindness and deafness, 
could not have acquired any expression through imitation, 
yet when a letter from a beloved friend was communicated to 
her by gesture-language, she "laughed and clapped her hands, 
and the colour mounted to her cheeks." On other occasions 
she has been seen to stamp for joy. 

Idiots and imbecile persons likewise afford good evidence 
that laug'hter or smiling primarily expresses mere happiness 
or joy. Dr, Crichton Browne, to whom, as on so many 
other occasions, I am indebted for the results of his wide expe- 
rience, informs me that with idiots laughter is the most preva- 
lent and frequent of all the emotional expressions . . , The 
joyousness of most of these idiots cannot possibly be associated, 
as Dr. Browne remarks, with any distinct ideas : they simply 
feel pleasure, and express it by laughter or smiles. With imbe- 
ciles rather higher in the scale, personal vanity seems to be the 
commonest cause of laughter, and next to this, pleasure arising 
from the approbation of their conduct." ['72, p, 196 f.] 

Darwin also appreciated the need of explaining the fact that 
tickling so commonly provokes laughter — a fact which is a 
thorn in the side of all the grandiose theories of the comic. 

"The imagination is sometimes said to be tickled by a 
ludicrous idea ; and this so-called tickling of the mind is curi- 
ously analogous with that of the body. Every one knovv^s how 
immoderately children laugh, and how their whole bodies are 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION 167 

convulsed when they are tickled. The anthropoid apes, as we 
have seen, likewise utter a reiterated sound, corresponding- with 
our laughter, when they are tickled, especially under the arm- 
pits . . . Yet laughter from a ludicrous idea, though invol- 
untary, cannot be called a strictly reflex action. In this case, 
and in that of laughter from being tickled, the mind must be in 
a pleasurable condition ; a young child, if tickled by a strange 
man, would scream from fear. The touch must be light, and 
an idea or event, to be ludicrous, must not be of grave import." 
['72, p. 199.] 

Bergson ['ii*] declares that the situation which pro- 
vokes laughter must be within the pale of human behavior or at 
least be temporarily so regarded. "You may laugh at an ani- 
mal, but only because you have detected in it some human atti'- 
tude or expression. You may laugh at a hat, but what you are 
making fun of, in this case, is not the piece of felt or straw, 
but the shape that men have given it — the human caprice whose 
mould it has assumed [p. 3]. In particular it is any feature 
of a man's behavior (or of the behavior of something which is 
for the time being assimilated to man) which has a certain un- 
usual and inappropriate stiffness and lack of adjustment — "a 
certain mechanical inelasticity, just where one would expect 
to find the wideawake adaptability and the living pliableness 
of a human being" [p. 10]. Failure of adaptation, rigidity, 
"the deflection of life toward the mechanical," "something me- 
chanical encrusted on the living," "the body taking precedence 
of the soul" are other expressions, the cleverest of all being the 
dictum that "we laugh every time a person gives us the im- 
pression of being a thing" [p. 58]. 

The felicity of M. Bergson's epigrams should not hide 
the inadequacy of his doctrine. It fits only the one case of 
laughing at a definite object, not the more fundamental laughter 
of delight, laughter by contagion when others laugh, laughter 
of sheer high spirits and merriment. It is guilty of sub- 
stantially the same sins of omission as is the superiority doc- 

*A revision and translation into English of essays which appeared 
in their first form in 1900. 



l68 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

trine, though it does not commit the latter's sin of assuming 
that every opportunity to feel superior is an adequate stimuhis 
to laughter. 

Hall and AUin think as a result of their census of experi- 
ences ['97] that being tickled, the behavior of familiar animals, 
recovery from slight fear, the calamity of another, the so-called 
practical joke, caricature, sudden slight shock and the forbid- 
den or secret, are the chief objects to which laughter is an un- 
learned response. 

Sully ['02, p. 57 ff.] defines the total situation in which 
tickling produces laughter as one in which "the child is happy 
and disposed to take things lightly and as play," in which the 
expected contact comes from a "good-natured mother or nurse 
by way of play," so that tliere is "relief from a serious and con- 
strained, attitude, a transition from a momentary apprehension 
. . . to a joyous sense of harmless make-believe." He thinks 
that the sudden relaxation of a specially severe strain evokes 
laughter of the nervous semi-hysterical sort [ibid., 65 ff.]. 
"The laughter of joy is most noticeable," he thinks, "under two 
sets of conditions. Of these tlie first is the situation of release 
from external restraint." The second is "the arrival of 
some good thing which is at once unexpected and big enough 
to lift us to a higher level of happiness" [ibid., p. 72]. Under 
these two general rules Sully would bring the resumption of the 
play attitude, kindly teasing, practical joking, relief and ex- 
ultation after victory, and relief from the 'emotional pressure' 
of solemn occasions. The 'more intellectual' causes of laughter 
he finds to be : 'novelty and oddity' to a person feeling him- 
self secure; 'bodily deformities,' especially 'additions or exten- 
sions;' 'certain moral deformities' such as 'dumbness, coward- 
ice, miserliness, and vanity ;' 'breaches of order and rule ;' 'small 
misfortunes, especially those which involve something in the 
nature of a difficulty or "fix" '; 'the indecent;' 'pretences;' the 
exliibition of 'want of knowledge or of skill;' 'relations of 
contrariety and incongruity;' 'verbal play and amusing witti- 
cism ;' 'object'^ vrhich affect us as expressions of a merrv mood ;' 



THE EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION 169 

and 'situations which involve a relation akin to that of victor 
and vanquished.' [ibid., pp. 82-153, passim.] 

The reader will have noted that the simple general theories 
of the situations to which laughter is the response fail to fit 
the facts, whereas the attempts of Hall and Allin and of Sully 
to work up from the facts leave us with an unorganized melange 
of provocatives of laughter. What originally provokes laugh- 
ter must be, one feels, some simpler set of situations or ele- 
ments of situations than they list, but these original bonds, 
which grow into the complex of habits of laughing in re- 
sponse to health, slight shock, caricature, others' discomfort, 
being tickled and so on, remain uncertain. 

Similar disagreements and complexities would be found 
also in the case of man's original tendencies to weep, blush, 
increase heart-rate or deepen inspiration. The discovery and 
proof of what situations originally provoke these expressive 
movements, obvious or hidden, is a task for the future. 



chapter xii 
Consciousness, Learning, and Remembering 

Our inventory so far has not included the original tenden- 
CU.S of the original tendencies themselves — the original tenden- 
cies not to this or that particular sensitivity, bond or power of 
response, but of sensitivities, connections and responses, in 
general. Thus, it is a fact of original nature that being im- 
pressed by this, that and the other situation and making this. 
that and the other connection occupies time, may produce the 
inner life which a man has as his consciousness, and may leave 
an effect upon the man's nature long after the situation and 
response of that time are ended. It is a fact of original na- 
ture that certain states of affairs are satisfying to a man's 
neurones — are such as they do nothing to avoid, whereas other v 
states of affairs are annoying to the neurones — stimulate them 
to do something until the annoying state of affairs gives way 
to a satisfying one which they do nothing to avoid. That 
is, reflexes, instincts and capacities ( i ) always talce place in 
time, (2) sometimes produce or modify the inner conscious 
life of the animal whose they are, and (3) sometimes change 
the organism more or less permanently. The neurones which 
are concerned in them have roughly the original tendency (4) to 
do nothing different when their life processes are being facili- 
tated and to make whatever changes are in their repertory when 
their life processes are disturbed. 

The first of these general tendencies everyone properly 
takes for granted. No more need be said of it. 

original tendencies to consciousness 

Little need be said of the second. Man's original nature 
is such that, when certain parts of his millions of neurones act 

170 



CONSCIOUSNESS^ LEARNING AND REMEMBERING I /I 

in certain ways, he has, or is, certain states of awareness, feel- 
ing, consciousness, purely mental existence, or whatever one 
chooses to call the inner life to which a man refers when he 
asks himself, 'Is this the same dream that I had last night?' 
or, *Is this pain different from what I felt a second ago?' 
What, in detail, the exact nature of the consciousness related 
to any given action of any given part of his neurones is, no one 
knows. But no competent thinker doubts that bonds exist in 
original nature whereby any one given status of a man's nerv- 
ous system produces always the same condition of conscious- 
ness. Whenever, from any set of causes, that neurone-status 
is brought to pass, that condition of consciousness will also 
appear. 

It is conceivable that, if provided with enough knowledge 
and skill, man might determine his states of consciousness by 
direct operations upon his neurones. By local stimulation and 
restriction of the action of neurones he might induce one emo- 
tion or thought and abolish another, as he now increases the 
sense of well-being by alcohol or dulls pain by morphine. He 
might then use the original tendencies for certain action in 
certain neurones to produce a certain condition of conscious- 
ness in as practical a way as we now use the original tendency 
for a touch on the back of the tongue to produce swallowing 
movements. 

THE CAPACITY TO LEARN 

The third fact noted above refers to the capacity for perma- 
nent modifiability or 'learning,' which is, from the point of 
view of man's welfare, the most important fact in nature. 

The Law of Use. — To the situation, 'a modifiable connec- 
tion being made by him between a situation S and a response 
R,' man responds originally, other things being equal, by an 
increase in the strength of that connection. By the strength of 
a connection is meant the probability that it will be made when 
the situation recurs. Greater probability that a connection will 
be made means a greater probability for the same time, or an 



1/2 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

equal probability but for a longer time.* Thus, strengthening 
the connection between 'being asked how many six and seven 
are' and 'saying ''thirteen," ' may mean that the piobability 
of that response during the next six days is eight out of ten 
instead of seven out of ten, or that the probability is seven 
out of ten for sixty days instead of for forty. 

The Lozv of Disuse. — To the situation, 'a modifiable con- 
nection not being made by him between a situation S and a 
response R, during a length of time T,' man responds origin- 
ally, other things being equal, by a decrease in the strength of 
that connection. 

The tendencies of use and disuse may be listed together 
under one name as the Law of Exercise. 

As corollaries of the law of use we have the facts that the 
degree of strengthening of a connection will depend upon the 
vigor and duration as well as the frequency of its making. To 
think '6+7=13' attentively and for ten seconds will thus in- 
crease the strength of its bond more than to think of it lightly 
and for only half a second. 

The Lazv of Effect. — To the situation, 'a modifiable connec- 
tion being made by him between an S and an R and being 
accompanied or followed by a satisfying state of aiffairs' man 
responds, other things being equal, by an increase in the 
strength of that connection. To a connection similar, save that 
an annoying state of affairs goes with or follows it, man re- 
sponds, other things being equal, by a decrease in the strength 
of the connection. 

As a corollary to the law of effect we have the fact that 
the strengthening effect of satisfyingness varies with its inti- 
macy with the bond in question as well as with the degree of 
satisfyingness. Such intimacy, or closeness of connection be- 
tween the satisfying state of affairs and the bond it affects, 
may be due to close temporal sequence or to attentiveness to 
the situation and response. Other things being equal, the 

*Certain additions and qualifications are necessary to make this defini- 
tion adequate, but it will serve provisionally. 



/ 



CONSCIOUSNESS, LEARNING AND REMEMBERING 1/3 

same degree of satisfyingness will act more strongly on a bond 
made two seconds previously than on one made two minutes 
previously, — miore strongly on a bond between a situation and 
a response attended to closely than on a bond equally remote 
in time in an unnoticed series. 

These tendencies for connections to gi'ow strong by exer- 
cise and satisfying consequences and to grow weak by disuse 
and annoying consequences should, if importance were the 
measure of the space to be allotted to topics, preempt at least 
half of this inventory. As the features of man's original 
equipment whereby all the rest of that equipment is modified 
for use in a complex civilized world, they are of universal im- 
portance in education. They are the effective original forces 
in what has variously been called nurture, training, learning 
by experience, or intelligence. 

Since, however, they are so clear and straightforward, they 
need no commicnt at this point* save this reminder of their im- 
portance, a statement of which connections are modifiable, and 
a defense of them against certain wrong accounts of the orig- 
inal tendencies to strengthen and weaken bonds in behavior. 

LIMITATIONS TO MODIFIABILITY 

Which connections are modifiable is not known with abso- 
lute surety and precision. At one extreme are connections, 
such as that between 'being supported by only the air' and 
'falling toward the centre of the earth,' which are utterly un- 
modifiable. At the other extreme are connections, such as that 
between the situation just mentioned and 'screaming,' which 
are obviously modifiable. One will always tend to fall but he 
may learn not to tend to scream. 

The doubtful cases are the connections found in reflexes 

*Since these original tendencies for use and satisfying consequences 
to strengthen connections, and for disuse and annoyingness to weaken 
them, are the efficient forces in learning, they will be discussed again in 
the second volume of this treatise from the point of view of an inquiry 
into man's acquired tendencies or the results of learning. 



174 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

like the contraction of the pupil to brighter light, or sneezing 
at certain irritations of the mucous membrane of the nose, and 
in the still more purely physiological behavior of circulation, 
digestion, metabolism and the like.* It is chiefly in hygiene and 
medicine that doubt arises whether a certain change can or 
cannot be regulated by use, disuse, satis fyingness and dis- 
comfort. 

THE SUPPOSED FORMATION OF CONNECTIONS BY 'FACULTIES^ 

There are three current opinions concerning the original 
capacities of man to learn, that is, to strengthen and weaken 
bonds in behavior, which seem contrary to fact. First is the 
opinion that attention, memory, reasoning, choice and the like 
are mystical powers given to man as his birthright which 
weight the dice in favor of thinking or doing one thing rather 
than another, however the laws of instinct, exercise and effect 
make the throw. This opinion is vanishing from the world of 
expert thought and no more need be said about it than that it 
is false and would be useless to human welfare if true. 

THE SUPPOSED FORMATION OF CONNECTIONS BY THE PERCEP- 
TION OF THEIR ACTION IN ANOTHER 

The second opinion is that for a man to perceive an S-R 
sequence in another man's behavior in and of itself predis- 
poses him to respond to that S by that R — that imitation exists 
as a force whereby the perception of R, in connection with S, 
in another man's behavior creates a bond between R and S in 
the perceiving individual. Of this I can find no evidence. 

It is, of course, the case that imitation of a certain sort is 
potent in man's learning. First, certain behavior of other 
men, as has been shown, stirs the percipient to the same be- 
havior. Smiling at a smile, following a leader, and being 

*"Occasional instances are recorded of power to slow the rhythm of 
the heart at will; others of power to suppress the reflex of swallowing 
when it has entered on its pharyngeal stage." [Sherrington, '06, p. 389.] 



CONSCIOUSNESS, LEARNING AND REMEMBERING 175 

pleased at another's pleasure are, like most instincts, educative 
in their limited sphere. In the second place, the behavior of 
other men again and again provides models which decide, in 
whole or in part, the satis fyingness of one's own responses, and 
so are accessories in the action of the law of effect. But this 
is not the imitation required by the opinion in question. The 
enunciation or gesture of another man, acting as a model, 
forms one's habits of speech or manners in just the same way 
that the physical properties of trees form one's habits of 
climbing. 

In the third place, the behavior of other men may, as a 
child's intellect develops, suggest to him all sorts of ideas ; 
these ideas may lead to acts by the la'ws of exercise and effect ; 
these acts may often be like those which gave the suggestion. 
Thus seeing someone taking a drink of water may suggest 
awareness of my own thirst, or the fact that I shall not again 
have an opportunity to get water during the afternoon, or 
the mere thought of getting a drink. Any one of these 
thoughts has strong connections by previous habit with the re- 
sponse of getting a drink. The behavior of others is a very 
important provider of situations to which habit has bound re- 
sponses like the behavior seen. But the binding force is habit 
— that is, the laws of exercise and effect — not imitation in 
the sense required by the theory in question. 

For the sheer direct potency of an S-R connection wit- 
nessed to reproduce itself in the witness, the evidence alleged 
is that from infant life rehearsed on pages 110-122 (which, 
we found, shrank to the pitiable mystery of one or two babies 
sticking out their tongues) and that from men in mobs who 
are supposed to display this sheer direct modifiability by imita- 
tion because they act against habit and their own essential 
desires. It is beyond the scope of this book to explain m.ob- 
psychology, but a recital of the details in such cases would, I 
think, show that fleeing, attacking, pouncing on and rending, 
and other wholes or fragments of instinctive cooperative activi- 
ties, were all that happened supposedly as a consequence of 



176 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

imitation. Such would happen by reason of specific original 
bonds with the specific situations, irrespective of any general 
imitative tendency, if acquired restraints were dissipated by 
excitement, temporary monomania or the suggestions of a 
magnetic leader. 

There is then no more evidence for thoroughgoing imita- 
tion as a general capacity for learning than we found for it as a 
general instinctive response to the behavior of other men. The 
two senses would indeed be the same, and the facts noted here 
and in Chapter VIII could as well have been combined in one 
contra-argument. 

THE SUPPOSED FORMATION OF CONNECTIONS BY THE POWER 
OF AN IDEA TO PRODUCE THE ACT WHICH IT REPRESENTS 

Next, and even more orthodox, is the theory of ideo-motor 
action, that the idea of an act or of the result of an act, or of 
some part of such result, tends, in and of itself, to produce or 
connect with that act. Accordingly an act may be bound to 
any situation by connecting with that situation some conscious 
representation of that act. 

The classic statement of the power to bind acts to situa- 
tions by so linking ideas of them is given by James in the often 
quoted dictum : — 

"We may then lay it down for certain that every represen- 
tation of a movement azvakens in some degree the actual 
movement which is its object; and awakens it in a maximum 
degree whenever it is not kept from so doing by an antagon- 
istic representation present simidtaneously to the mind." ['93, 
vol. 2, p. 526.] 

McDougall, in listing ideo-motor action as a 'general or 
non-specific innate tendency,' describes it thus : 

"In the special case in which the object to which we direct 
our attention by a volitional effort is a bodily movement, the 
movement follows immediately upon the idea in virtue of that 
mysterious connection between them of which we know almost 
nothing beyond the fact that it obtains" ['08, p. 242] ; and 



CONSCIOUSNESS, LEARNING AND REMEMBERING I77 

elsewhere "... the visual presentation of the movement of 
another is apt to evoke the representation of a similar move- 
ment of one's own body, which, like all motor representations, 
tends to realize itself immediately in movement" ['08, p. 105]. 

Wundt's account of the power of an image or idea of a 
movement to connect that movement with itself is obscure, 
but he seems to state that kinesthetic images tend as situations 
to evoke responses which they have not evoked before but 
which they are like. The apperception of an image of a move- 
ment, he says, is followed by the movement unless some contrary 
force acts. In particular "children and primitive men are 
not able to get fully a vivid idea of a movement of their own 
bodies without having such a movement actually take place" 
['93, vol, 2, p. 567 f.]. The context shows that Wundt 
does not at all mean that they need to make the movement so as 
to get the image, but accepts the common view that any image 
tends to evoke the movement which it most resembles or is an 
image of, regardless of whether any bond has been made by 
use, disuse, satisfaction or discomfort. 

Against this orthodox opinion, I contend that the idea of a 
movement (or of any response whatever) is, in and of itself, 
unable to produce it. I contend that an idea does not tend 
to provoke the act which it is an idea of, but only that which it 
connects with as a result of the lazvs of instinct, exercise anS. 
effect. 

In particular I contend that any idea, image, sensation, 
percept, or any other mental state whatever, has, apart from 
use, disuse, satisfaction and discomfort, no stronger tendency 
to call up a movement like itself or meant by it than to call up 
any other movement. Two intelligible meanings can be at- 
tached to 'the representation of a certain movement by an 
idea,' or to 'an idea having a certain movement as its object,' 
or to 'an idea being of a certain movement,' and the like. The 
first is that the idea is like the movement in the same way that 
the mental image of a red inch square is like such a square. 

The second is that the idea means the movement in the same 
12 



170 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

way that the image of the words *red inch square' means such 
a square. I hold that in neither meaning does an idea tend to 
produce what it represents or lias as its object, or is an idea of 
— that, in and of itself, an idea tends to do so no more when 
what it represents is a movement of one's own body than when 
what it represents is a red-inch-square. 

The upholders of the orthodox view have not stated what 
'the mysterious connection' is. They may mean by 'repre- 
sent,' 'have as object' and 'be of simply 'tend to produce,' 'lead 
to,' 'evoke as response.' In that case the doctrine of the 'im- 
pulsive power of ideas' is a mere tautology, stating- that an 
idea produces what it does produce, evokes as a response what 
it does evoke. Just this may indeed have been James' mean- 
ing. For he was interested primarily in the negative fact 
that no special ad hoc consciousness of 'willing' was a neces^ 
sity. It was indifferent to his main purpose how an idea was 
able to lead to action.* 

They may mean by 'to represent' or 'to have as object', 
simply 'to have been connected with in accordance with the laws 
of exercise and effect.' In that case, the doctrine of the 'im- 
pulsive power of ideas' is precisely, as I assert, one small fea- 

*The reader acquainted with psychological literature on Action will 
understand that I have quoted James' account of the doctrine that the 
resemblance between an idea and an act (or the act's result) tends in 
and of itself to form a bond between that idea and that act simply be- 
cause his statement is one of the clearest, most instructive, and most 
accepted by psychologists, not because he is prominent as a defender 
of such magic powers in general. On the contrary, James advocated 
idea-mo<tor action as a refuge from a still worse magic, the supposed need 
of some innerA^ation-sense, or some special consciousness of willing, or 
some ex cathedra Hat of one's personality, in order to get out of bed or 
wash one's face. He was not interested in showing positively that con- 
nections can be created between a situation and an act by the likeness of 
the former to the latter, but in shovv'ing negatively that man does not 
need a special volitional act or conscious Hat or fore-feeling of the muscle's 
innervation to create them. For his purpose it made no difference whether 
for an idea to be 'a representation of a movement' meant 'to be like it' 
or 'to have been a situation provoking it,' — whether for a movement to 
be the 'object' of an idea meant to be like it or to have been provoked 
by it. He did not raise the issue. 



CONSCIOUSNESS, LEARNING AND REMEMBERING 1/9 

,ture of the general law that any situation tends to produce the 
response that original nature and these laws of learning have 
bound to it. So Angell states, in discussing this matter, that 
"the appropriate muscular activity never follows an idea unless 
one's previous experience has in some fashion or other estab- 
lished a nexus of the habit type." ['04, p. 356 f.] 

In general, however, as the use of the doctrine of ideo- 
motor action in applications to education, medicine and ethics 
shows, its adherents do assume an intrinsic tendency of an 
idea to produce the movement which it is like, or which it 
means, or both. This appears in a recent statement of the doc- 
trine made, with awareness of the contrary view, by Wash- 
burn. She says: "A movement idea is the revival, through 
central excitation, of the sensations, visual, tactile, kinesthetic 
originally produced by the performance of the movement it- 
self. And when such an idea is attended to, when, in popular 
language, we think hard enough of how the movement would 
"feel" and look if it were performed, then, so close is the con- 
nection between sensory and motor processes, the movement is 
instituted afresh. This is the familiar doctrine expounded by 
James in Chapter XXVI of his "Psychology." ['08, p. 280.] 

It is asserted here that, if, to a certain situation. Si, a 
certain m.ovement. Mi, is the response and if Mi in turn 
produces the sensations Visual, tactile, kinesthetic,' Seui, then 
Seui, or the images corresponding to Seui (call these Imi), 
will have power, irrespective of any additional connections in 
the animal's experience, to evoke some movement. It is as- 
serted further that Imi will evoke the particular movement Mi 
which produced SeUi. Washburn does not say whether this 
potency is due to the likeness of Imi to Mi, or to the fact 
that Seui followed Mi closely in the same pulse of life. I am 
willing to admit a slight bond due to the latter cause, though 
I should insist that Si would be much more closely bound as 
antecedent to Mi than Seni or Imi would be, by such an 
experience. 

Since Miss Washburn goes on to make such Im^-^-Mx ten- 



l80 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

dencies the essential thing in the acquisition of skill, and since 
the very slight forzvard bond created by use between a condi- 
tion and the condition preceding it is obviously not the essen- 
tial thing in such learning, it seems certain that she has in 
mind some veritable potency of likeness. The close 'connec- 
tion between sensory and motor processes' which she posits 
would seem to be the connection betAveen a given sensory pro- 
cess Seui and the movement, Mi, which it was like, and would 
seem to be close, not because the Mi-)»-Seni connection had, as 
an additional effect, a very slight tendency to production of the 
SeUi-^-Mi connection, but because Seni was more 'like' Mi 
than any other M. 

Professor Calkins still more explicitly states that in volun- 
tary action we arouse a certain response by getting in mincl 
an idea that is like the response. An 'outer' volition being a 
volition to act in a certain way and an 'inner' volition being a 
volition to think in a certain way, "The volition is the image 
of an action or of a result of action which is normally siiiiitar 
and antecedent to this same action or result. My volition to 
sign a letter is either an image of my hand moving the pen 
or an image of my signature written, and my volition to pur- 
chase something is an image of myself in the act of handing 
out money or an image of my completed purchase — golf stick 
or Barbedienne bronze." ['oi, p. 299.] Inner volitions "do 
not so closely resemble their results. The volitional image of 
an act may be, in detail, like the act as performed;" but the 
volitional image of a thought is followed by only a "partially 
similar" thought. ['01, p. 303.] 

Whatever be the precise opinions of these particular authors, 
there is a general belief that the likeness of an act to an idea 
creates an efficient bond between them. Since this belief, or 
something to the same effect, is at the bottom of widespread 
practices in medicine, moral education, school management, 
business and politics, it and the denial of it which I have made, 
must be examined. 

First of all, if James' 'representation of a movement' and 



CONSCIOUSNESS, LEARNING AND REMEMBERING l8l 

McDougall's 'idea' are taken in their ordinary meanings, cases 
can be found where such cannot awaken the actual movements 
which they are representations of ideas of. A little child may 
have made a certain movement* a thousand times and may 
be entirely willing and eager to make it, but, no matter how 
vividly the movement is described to him, he cannot make it 
as a result of the ideas of it evoked by such a description and 
his own best efforts if, hitherto, he has made the movement 
only in response to sensory stimuli. The idea has to be con- 
nected with the movement or with the sensory stimuli to which 
the movement is the response by exercise or effect before it has 
an iota of efficiency in awakening the movement. 

An idea of an act, not bound to that idea by use and effect 
certainly need not be immediately followed by that act. If 
all the readers of this page summon the most lively and accu- 
rate ideas that they can of sneezing, vomiting and hiccup- 
ing, one after another, not once in a hundred times will the 
actual movements be made. Either the reader cannot get a 
representation of those movements of the sort the theory has 
in mind, or the theory fails. But if the representation of the 
movement needed by the theory is such as not one in a hundred 
well-intentioned students of psychology can get, the theory be- 
comes a priori very dubious. Why should men in general 
have the capacity to provoke an act by an idea of it, but only 
such an idea as not one man in a hundred can summon ? 

In the second place, in at least the majority of connections 
where the idea of an act does produce the actual movement, 
the connection can be proved to have been built up by the laws 
of exercise and effect. When one has the idea of going to 
bed and goes, or of writing the word 'cat' and writes it, the ex- 
planation is found in the previous training that has put the 
idea of going to bed with being sleepy and other situations to 
which going to bed was the original or acquired response, or 
has put the act of going to bed with the idea of doing so. 

*The cases observed are those of emptying the bladder, and of 
defecation. 



I02 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Let the reader now, as he sits in his chair, summon unopposed 
the idea of standing up. He may do it, for the idea of 
standing up has gone with many direct sensory situations 
which have, by exercise and effect, led to rising from a chair. 
It has, indeed, itself been bound as situation to that response. 
But let him summon the idea of diving off a post and he will 
not make the corresponding movements,* but, if he does any- 
thing, will stand up. Then of course he may make the div- 
ing movements. What 'follows immediately upon the idea' 
of a movement is the act that has followed it or some element 
of it often or with resulting satisfaction, not the act that is like 
the idea. 

In the third place, it is certain that, apart from exercise 
and effect, such ideas of movements as one commonly gets 
do not as a rule produce the movements, and that such move- 
ments as one makes do not often come from ideas of them. 
Let the reader think of the following movements one after an- 
other : — reaching for an apple on his knee, grasping it, putting 
it in his mouth, biting it, chewing the pieces, swallowing the 
chewings ; getting out of bed, walking to his bath, turning the 
faucet, climbing into the tub, splashing himself, getting out, 
shivering, taking towels from the rack, rubbing himself ; taking 
a book, opening at page i, moving the eyes as in reading; and so 
on through a thousand movements of daily life. Consider 
also the thousand or more different voluntary movements last 
made by you. How few were responses to ideas of them and 
how many were responses to sensory situations or ideas totally 
different from them but with which they had been connected by 
habit ! In the illustrations given by James in the very section 
in which he announces the doctrine of ideo-motor action, all 
but one show the movement led up to by a sensorial situation 
or an idea that is not of the movement at all. That one shows 
the person making the movement in order to get the idea of it! 

Since these illustrations are typical of the evidence that has 

*That is, such portions of them as could be made from a sitting 
position. 



CONSCIOUSNESS^ LEARNING AND REMEMBERING 183 

been used to support the doctrine that 'we think the act and 
it is done/ they may profitably be examined one by one. The 
first two are as follows : "Whilst talking I become conscious 
of a pin on the floor, or of some dust on my sleeve. Without 
interrupting the conversation, I brush away the dust or pick 
up the pin. . . . the mere perception of the object and the 
fleeting notion of the act seem of themselves to bring the latter 
about" ['93, vol. 2, p. 522]. Now what would be the prob- 
able response to the 'mere perception' of the dust on the sleeve 
supposing there had been no 'notion of the act'? Surely to 
brush it away. And with what would 'the notion of the act' 
have been bound by the laws of exercise and efifect alone? 
Surely with the response of brushing the dust away. So also 
with picking up the pin. By the laws of exercise and effect the 
sensorial situation without the idea is adequate to produce the 
response ; and the idea itself needs no potency from its likeness 
to the act. 

"Similarly I sit at table after dinner anti find myself from 
time to time taking nuts and raisins out of the dish and eating 
them . . . the perception of the fruit and the fleeting notion 
that I may eat it seem fatally to bring the act about." [ibid., 
p. 522 f.] It seems clear that for the behavior in question 
no other force than the perception of the fruit and the laws 
of exercise and effect is needed. The notion 'that I may eat it' 
is here not only one to which the act might well be bound by 
exercise and efifect, but is apparently nowise like the acts to 
which it leads. The notion seems to be a rather vague on&, 
'all right to eat it' occurring once, while the act is a very com- 
plex one of reaching, grasping, carrying to the mouth, etc., 
and is repeated over and over again. 

The fourth illustration is getting out of bed: — . . . "the 
idea flashes across me, 'Hollo! I must lie here no longer' — an 
idea which at that lucky instant awakens no contradicting or 
paralyzing suggestions, ahd consequently produces immediately 
its appropriate motor effects." [ibid., p. 524.] Here the idea 
is patently not a representation of the movement at all. The 



184 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

'Hollo' and *I must' show clearly that it is in words,* not in 
images of leg, trunk and arm movements. Its motor effects 
are appropriate, not in the sense of being in the least like it or 
represented by it, but in the sense of being the effects which 
that idea, when uncontested, had, by exercise and effect, come 
to produce in that man. The 'Hollo ! I must' is a lineal de- 
scendant of the sensory admonitions from others received 
during life and connected each with its sequent response by 
use, satisfaction, and the discomforting punishment attached 
to opposite courses. 

These four cases are all such as a believer in the entire suf- 
ficiency of the laws of exercise and effect might properly 
choose as illustrations of their action. Moreover, in three the 
sensorial situation is adequate, and in the fourth the idea nowise 
represents or is like the movements. 

The fifth case is : "Try to feel as if you were crooking your 
finger, whilst keeping it straight. In a minute it will fairly 
tingle with the imaginary change of position; yet it will not 
sensibly move because its not really moving is also a part of 
what you have in mind. Drop this idea, think of the move- 
ment purely and simply, with- all brakes off ; and, presto ! it takes 
place with no effort at all." [ibid., p. 527.] Now the essen- 
tial fact here is that when one is told to try to feel as if he 
were crooking his finger, he tends, in the case of many sub- 
jects, to respond by taking an obvious way to get that feeling — 
namely, by actually crooking his finger. He responds to the 
request, regardless of any ideas beyond his understanding of 
the words, by a strong readiness to crook his finger. Being 
forbidden, he restrains the impulse. The 'tingling' is not from 
the imaginary change of the finger's position but from the 
real restraint from changing its position. The tingling occurs 
with individuals who cannot imagine the finger's movement. 
Far from showing that the imagined movement is adequate, 

*If by any sophistry it could be twisted into a representation of leg 
and trunk movements, it would be only the representation of lying still 
plus the idea of negation. 



CONSCIOUSNESS^ LEARNING AND REMEMBERING 185 

in and of itself, to cause the movement, such cases show that it is 
unsafe to infer that the image comes first in cases where delib- 
erately evoked images of movements are accompanied by the 
movements or parts thereof. 

It appears then that the great majority of movem-ents are 
not produced by ideas of them and that the majority of ideas 
of movements do not produce the movements which they rep- 
resent. When an idea does produce the movement which it is 
an idea of, that movement gives evidence of having been bound 
to that idea by exercise or effect.* The connection whereby 
the idea of a movement could, in and of itself, produce that 
movement would indeed be mysterious if it existed, but it does 
not exist. 

ATTEMPTED EXPLANATIONS OF LEARNING BY THE LAWS OF 
EXERCISE ALONE 

A fourth error in the description of the original tendencies 
to alter the connections between situations and responses is to 
neglect the law of effect, the influence of satisfiers and annoyers 
in strengthening and weakening connections — ^to reduce the 
process of habit-formation to the effects of use and disuse 
alone. This inadequate view may be taken either from mere 
neglect of the observable facts in the case, or from a delib- 
erate effort to get from evidence an even simpler view of the 
capacity to learn than that which I have defended. Of the 
latter origin are the hypotheses of Jennings, Stevenson Smith, 
and Hobhouse. A refutation of their arguments will there- 
fore be the best way to establish the existence of an original 
tendency for satisfaction to strengthen, and discomfort to 
weaken, the bonds which they accompany or closely follow. 

Jennings has formulated as an adequate account of learning 
the law that : "When a certain physiological state has been re- 

*Further evidence against the assumption that ideas have power in 
and of themselves to create bonds in behavior may be found in an 
article by the author which will appear in the Psychological Review 
during 1913. 



l86 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

solved, through the continued action of an external agent, or 
otherwise, into a second physiological state, this resolution be- 
comes easier, so that in course of time it takes place quickly 
and spontaneously." ['06, p. 289.] "The law may be ex- 
pressed briefly as follows : The resolution of one physiological 
state into another becomes easier and more rapid after it has 
taken place a number of times. Hence the behavior primarily 
characteristic for the second state comes to follow immedi- 
ately upon the first state. The operations of this law are, of 
course, seen on a vast scale in higher organisms in the phe- 
nomena which we commonly call memory, association, habit 
formation and learning," [ibid., p. 291.] This law may be 
expressed symbolically as follows : 

Let A, B, C and D represent a series of consecutive states 
of affairs in an animal. Let the bonds connecting them be 
represented by arrows. Let b and c represent B and C, when 
passed through rapidly and in modified form so that they lack 
any of the consequences of B and C save that of eventually 
leading to D. 

Then the law is that 

A->^B->-C->-D 
tends, by mere repetition, to become 

A->D 
or 

A^b^c-^D. 

Mere repetition, however, gives no reason for the pro- 
duction by A of now B, and later a different thing, D or b. 
If A is the same, it must in the same conditions produce always 
the same result. If it appears on repetition to produce a differ- 
ent result, there must have been some change in it or in the 
conditions. Mere repetition of A->-B->"C^D could never 
strengthen the A->-D and weaken the A->-B or A->-C prob- 
abilities. If D is made more probable, and B and C less prob- 
able in connection with A, the oftener A occurs, it is because of 
the results of B, C and D to the organism in that connection. 

Moreover "the resolution of one physiological state into 



CONSCIOUSNESS^ LEARNING AND REMEMBERING 187 

another" via connecting links does not, by repeated experiences 
of the series alone, ''become easier so that in course of time it 
takes place quickly and spontaneously." Paramecium, as Jen- 
nings has so effectively shown, reacts again and again through- 
out its life by stopping, backing, turning to the aboral side 
and then swimming forward. Let A, B, C, and D be the 
states in the animal productive of these respective responses. 
By the law of resolution a Paramecium should after some 
scores or hundreds of such reactions experience A-^-D, and so 
stop and at once swim forward. Professor Jennings does not 
write Paum from having written Parameciutn so often nor have 
to restrain himself from saying 3; ^ as soon as he has said a b. 
The law of resolution was suggested to fit certain special 
cases where the situation which starts the behavior-series in 
question is itself annoying and where this annoying situation 
can be evaded only by a 'successful' response. We have, that 
is, 

S producing AS a state of affairs in which S continues, and 
produces 

BS, a different state of affairs, but one in which 

S still continues and, produces 

CS, a different state of affairs, but one in which 

S still continues and, produces 

D, which does not include S, and by excluding it, 

relieves the annoyance. 
Now, by the law of effect, since D, the end-term of the 
series, is the only one that relieves the annoyance, the con- 
nection of S with D must be strengthened at the expense of all 
the other connections. So a series S->-AS->-BS->^CS->"D, 
will 'resolve' into its first and last term. It is the law of effect, 
however, that accounts for the resolution. 

Stevenson Smith starts from this same special case of 
relief from an annoying situation by changing it for any other, 
arguing as follows : 

"Let an organism at birth be capable of giving N reactions 
(a, b, c, . . . N) to a definite stimulus S and let only one of 



I5Q THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

these reactions be appropriate. If only one reaction can be 
given at a time and if the one given is determined by the state 
of the organism at the time S is received, there is one chance in 
N that it is the appropriate reaction. When the appropriate 
reaction is finally given, the other reactions are not called into 
play, S may cease to act, but until the appropriate reaction is 
given let the organism be such that it runs through the gamut 
of the others until the appropriate reaction is brought about. 
As there are N possible reactions, the chances are that the ap- 
propriate reaction v/ill be given before all N are performed. 
At the next appearance of the stimulus, which we may call S2, 
those reactions which were in the last case performed, are, 
through habit, more likely to be again brought about than those 
which were not performed. Let u stand for the unperformed 
reactions. Then we have N — u probable reactions to S21. 
Habit rendering the previously most performed reactions the 
most probable throughout we should expect to find the appro- 
priate reaction in response to 

Si contained in N. 

S2 contained in N — Uj,. 

Sa contained in N — «i — th. 



Sn contained in N — nu, which approaches one as a 
limit. 
Thus the appropriate reaction would be fixed through the laws 
of chance and habit. This law of habit is that when any ac- 
tion is performed a number of times under certain conditions, 
it becomes under those conditions more and more easily pef- 
formed." ['08, pp. 503-504]. 

This attractively simple hypothesis is entirely inadequate 
to account for habit-formation in general, and can account for 
even the one special case only by supposing — what does not 
occur — that the animal cannot repeat freely any one of the 
performances in his repertoire of responses to S. Thus sup- 
pose that N=3, and call these a, b, and c. Let b be the 
'appropriate' response that puts an end to S. Suppose the ani- 
mal to repeat each response six times before changing to 
another. Then the following are all the possible results from 



CONSCIOUSNESS, LEARNING AND REMEMBERING I89 

S, and each of these series is by chance equally likely to happen. 

a a a a a a b 

aaaaaaccccccb 

b 

b 

c c c c c c b 

ccccccaaaaaab 

In the long run, then, b can happen only one-third as often 

as a or c; and, though always successful, b must, if Smith's 

theory were true, appear steadily later and later. After enough 

repetitions of S, b could appear only after an infinite length 

of time ! 

Smith's hypothesis supposes the animal to be limited to such 
series as a b; a c b; b; b; c a b; c b. But animals do, as 
Smith's own admirable experiments abundantly show, very 
often repeat an 'unfavorable' response many times before 
changing to another. If the law of exercise acted alone, learn- 
ing could therefore not be adaptive. It is the effect of b 
that binds it to S. It is the effect of a and c which, in spite of 
greater frequency of their occurrence, can weaken their con- 
nections with S. Indeed an animal may by original nature 
respond to S by 
aaacaaccab, 
aaccccaaaccb, 

acacaaccacb, and the like, and yet eventually come 
to respond to S by b alone and at once, if a and c produce an- 
noying states of affairs while b produces freedom from the 
annoyance or a positive satisfaction. 

A less important attempt to explain the facts of modi- 
iiability or learning without the action of the law of effect is 
that of Hobhouse, who offers the incongruity with Ri of the 
later response (R2) to which any given response (Ri) to a 
situation (Si) leads, as the force which disjoins Ri from Si. 
The congruity of R2 with Ri is the joining force. I quote 
Holmes' statement of Hobhouse's doctrine, since it is perhaps 



190 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

clearer and better supported than the original statement. He 
writes : 

"A new point of view in regard to our problem has been 
presented by Hobhouse in his Mind in Evolution. To illus- 
trate this view let us recur to our chick. When a nasty cat- 
erpillar is seen for the first time the visual stimulus sets up a 
pecking reaction. This is followed by the stimulus of a bad 
taste which sets up various rejection movements, such as 
ejection of the food and wiping the bill. The order of events 
is : Stimulus . . . pecking . . . bad taste . . . rejec- 
tion. When the same kind of caterpillar is met with a second 
time the stimulus tends to elicit the rejection movements with 
which it has been associated instead of the movements of 
pecking. Is not the inhibition due to the fact that the stim- 
ulus has become associated with a response which is incon- 
gruous with the first? Movements of rejection and avoidance 
are incompatible with those of pecking and swallowing and it 
may therefore be unnecessary to look to any peculiarity of the 
physiological correlates of pain for an explanation of the inhi- 
bition of the original reaction. The stimulus becomes coupled 
with a new reflex arc; nervous energy is drained ofT in a new 
channel, and the future behavior becomes changed. If the 
taste is a very bad one, a great deal of energy is involved and 
the connection with the rejection response made very perme- 
able and the rejection movement easily set up. If a person is 
confronted with a sight of some nauseating medicine he has 
recently taken, avoiding or rejection movements are set up, 
such as making a face, or even retching movements of the stom- 
ach. Is it not these movements or attempts at movements that 
really inhibit the taking of the medicine? This is evinced by 
the chick described by Lloyd Morgan, which after an experi- 
ence with a nasty caterpillar approached one a second time, 
but stopped and wiped its bill and went away as if it actually 
repeated its first experience. Of course inhibition of the orig- 
inal response does not always involve contrary movements, 
but there may be impulses to such movements which do not 
issue in action. The principal feature in the modification of 
action through painful experience is the assimilation of im- 
pulses incongruous with the original one. 

In the reinforcement or stamping in of a reaction to a par- 
ticular stimulus that brings pleasure, it certainly seems as if 
pleasure or its physiological correlate in some way serves to 



CONSCIOUSNESS^ LEARNING AND REMEMBERING I9I 

cement more firmly the association between the stimulus and 
the response. Let us consider, however, the case in which the 
chick pecks at a caterpillar which has a good taste. The presence 
of the caterpillar in the mouth excites the swallowing reflexes; 
in the presence of a similar caterpillar the pecking response is 
made more readily than before, and whatever hesitation there 
may have been at first disappears. Is not the difference from 
the pain-response due to the fact that there is an organic in- 
compatibility between the first and second responses in the 
pain response, while there is an organic congruity or mutual 
reinforcement of these responses in the other? Pecking and 
swallowing form the normal elements of a chain reflex; when 
one part of the system is excited it tends to excite the rest, to 
increase the general tonus of all parts concerned in the reaction. 

According to the view here presented, whether a particular 
response to a stimulus tends to be repeated more readily or dis- 
continued, depends not upon the peculiar physiological state 
which may be produced in the brain, but upon the kind of 
responses which the stimuli brought by the act call forth. If 
an outreaching reaction becomes coupled with a withdrawing 
response the result is inhibition. If the reaction, on the other 
hand, brings stimuli which produce congruent reactions the as- 
sociation formed with these latter reinforces the first reaction. 
The pleasure-pain response then resolves itself into the forma- 
tion of associations. Withdrawing and defensive responses 
are usually initiated by pain-giving stimuli, and the instinctive 
or random movement which brings a painful stimulus is in- 
hibited under similar conditions in the future, not because of 
the pain of its physiological correlate, but because it comes to 
be associated with a withdrawing or defensive, and hence an 
incongruous or inhibitory reaction. Pleasure and pain thus 
interpreted have no mysterious power of stamping in or stamp- 
ing out certain associations. Whether the result is reinforce- 
ment or inhibition depends on the way in which a reaction and 
the secondary responses resulting from the situation in which 
the organism is thereby brought, happen to harmonize. 

The step from instinct to intelligence viewed as a physiolog- 
ical process involves, therefore, no essentially new element be- 
beyond the well-knov/n physiological properties of the nervous 
system, and we are not committed to any particular hypothesis 
as to the physiological accompaniments of pleasure or pain, or 
pleasantness and unpleasantness, in order to understand how 
behavior may become adaptively modified. How far the inter- 



192 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

pretation given will enable us to explain the development of 
intelligence I do not pretend to say. It may break down in 
attempts to apply it to higher forms of learning, but it affords 
a useful working hypothesis and takes us a way, I think, toward 
the solution of our j)roblem." ['11, p. 176 ff.] 

This doctrine is easily shown to be inadequate by the facts 
noted in the case of the hypotheses of Jennings and Smith, and 
by the further fact that a secondary response R2 may bind Ri 
to Si even though it is incongruous with it and disjoin Ri from 
Si though it is congruous with Ri. Thus a cat in a box, the 
door to which is opened, permitting escape and eating, when- 
ever the cat scratches herself, will soon come to scratch as soon 
as put in the box, though there is no congruity between escape 
through a door and scratching. Again, if a cat is put into a 
box, X, with tAvo alleys opening to the North from it, A and 
B, and if, whenever it advances two feet into alley A it is hit 
from behind with a club and so runs on out of the North end of 
A, whereas, if it advances two feet into alley B, it is given a 
piece of meat and hit gently from in front, the cat will, when 
put into X, be less likely to advance into A and more likely to 
advance into B. Yet the response of advancing into A pro- 
duced the congruous secondary response of advancing further 
in the same direction, whereas the response of advancing into 
B produced the incongruous retreat to X. 

Congruity and incongruity have, in and of themselves, no 
force to make and unmake connections. They seem to do so 
in certain special cases simply because congruity is, in those 
cases, a symptom of satisfyingness, and incongruity a symptom 
of annoyingness. The law of effect is primary, irreducible 
to the law of exercise, and with the latter is the moving force 
in all learning, 

REMEMBERING 

The words 'memory' and *to remember' are used by 
psychologists in two senses, first to describe consciousness of 
a certain sort, and second to describe the permanent effects of 
experience. The following quotations from James' chapter il- 
lustrate the former usage: 



CONSCIOUSNESS^ LEARNING AND REMEMBERING 193 

*'Memory proper, or secondary memory as it might be 
styled, is the knowledge of a former state of mind after it 
has already once dropped from consciousness; or rather it is 
the knowledge of an event, or fact, of which meantime we 
have not been thinking, zvith the additional consciousness that 
we have thought or experienced it before. 

The first element which such a knowledge involves would 
seem to be the revival in the mind of an image or copy of 
the original event. And it is an assumption made by many 
writers that the revival of an image is all that is needed to con- 
stitute the memory of the original occurrence. But such a 
revival is obviously not a memory, whatever else it may be; it 
is simply a duplicate, a second event, having absolutely no con- 
nection with the first event except that it happens to resemble 
it . . . No memory is involved in the mere fact of recur- 
rence. The successive editions of a feeling are so many inde- 
pendent events, each snug in its own skin. Yesterday's feel- 
ing is dead and buried ; and the presence of today's is no reason 
why it should resuscitate. A farther condition is required be- 
fore the present image can be held to stand for a past original. 
. . . And to 'refer' any special fact to the past epoch is to 
think that fact with the names and events which characterize 
its date, to think it, in short, with a lot of contiguous associates. 

But even' this would not be memory. Menjory requires 
more than mere dating of a fact in the past. It must be 
dated in my past. In other words, I must think that I directly 
experienced its occurrence. It must have that 'warmth and 
intimacy' which were so often spoken of in the chapter on the 
Self, as characterizing all experiences 'appropriated' by the 
thinker as his own. 

A general feeling of the past direction in time, then, a 
particular date conceived as lying along that direction, and 
defined by its name or phenomenal contents, an event imagined 
as located therein, and owned as part of my experience, — such 
are the elements of every act of memory. 

The objects of any cf these faculties may awaken belief or 
fail to awaken it ; the object of memory is only an object imag- 
ined in the past (usually very completely imaghied there) 
to which the emotion of belief adheres." ['93; vol. i, pp 
648-650, passim.] 

The second usage is clearest in such statements as *He 
remembers perfectly how to swim and how to dance,' the 
13 



194 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

meaning being that the person can swim and dance as well as 
he ever could. There is here no question of the person's con- 
sciousness — no question of ideas about objects, his own past or 
anything else — ^but only of the permanence of certain effects of 
experience. It is clear enough in other cases where states 
of consciousness are involved, but where the words 'memory' 
and 'remember' refer, not to the nature of the states of con- 
sciousness but to the permanence of the connections whereby 
such and such a state of consciousness is evoked by such and 
such a situation. Thus, to say that a child remembers the mul- 
tiplication table or the English equivalents of suinj cs, est means 
that the situations, '4 x 9," '7 x 3,' 'homo sum/ etc., will evoke 
certain responses, whether of movements or of states of con- 
sciousness, which have been bound to them in the past. We 
do not mean by such a statement to assert that the child thinks 
of his own past experiences of 4 x 9 or is in any wise specially 
conscious of himself or of the past. We mean simply that 
he can think or say or write 36, whereas the child who has for- 
gotten his multiplication table cannot. Memory in this second 
sense, then, is simply the permanence of the results of learning 
— the tendency of any situation to evoke that response which 
has been connected with it. 

It is with remembering in this second sense that we are 
here concerned. It is an original capacity of man — and of all 
other animals that can be properly said to learn. For learning 
itself implies at least some permanence in connections. With^- 
out it the law of use could not hold good, and the law of effect 
would be of no consequence if each strengthening of a bond by 
satisfying results vanished as soon as the satisfying results 
passed. Remembering has indeed been fully provided for in 
the description of the capacity to learn. So also has its oppo- 
site — forgetting — in the law of disuse, that, other things being 
equal, lapse of time weakens modifiable connections. 

The exact working of this capacity and incapacity whereby 
connections when formed persist, but with weakening strength 
as time elapses, will be described in a second volume on the 
Psychology of Learning. 



chapter xiii 

Summary, Criticism, and Classification 

In three respects the inventory of the last nine chapters 
may innocently mislead. The fact that any one of the elements 
of an original tendency or any combination of tendencies or 
any combination of elements may, within certain limits, act 
by itself has not been emphasized. Age, sex, race and other 
causes of individual differences in the strength of original ten- 
dencies have been neglected. The early and incessant modi- 
fication of original tendencies by their interaction under the 
conditions provided by physical and social surroundings has 
been taken for granted so absolutely that it may seem to have 
been forgotten. So the reader may have been left with an 
impression that each tendency named acts very definitely and 
exclusively as a unit, that some one typical original nature of 
man fits closely the original natures of all human individuals, 
and that each tendency of man's original nature remains in 
statu quo unless it is very vigorously attacked by special and 
artificial training. From time to time minor warnings against 
these false inferences have been given, and a brief statement of 
the facts here at the close of the inventory will suffice. 

THE action of FRAGMENTS AND COMBINATIONS OF ORIGINAL 

TENDENCIES 

It has been necessary for clearness and brevity to parcel out 
original tendencies into fairly clear'-cut behavior-series, treat- 
ing the situations and responses somewhat as if they were so 
many cups and so many saucers to be paired off for a tea-party. 
This rhetorical necessity of treating situations and responses 
more or less as indivisible and unamalgamable must not, how- 
ever, leave the impression that they are so in fact. On the 

195 



196 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

contrary, as I have tried to show concretely in several cases, a 
situation as nature offers it may be only a part of one of the 
situations here described, or a compound of several of them, or 
of all sorts of fragments of them. The responses similarly act 
in fragments and in combinations. Original tendencies are no 
more like a set of locks fitted to a set of keys than they are 
like a witch's pot which gives off unpredictable effects when 
this toad or that snake's eye is thrown in. 

Original nature is not a set of perfectly independent mech- 
anisms any more than it is a hodgepodge for chance. It is a 
factory or hierarchy of mechanisms, with very many compo- 
nents, of which many cooperate in response to any one situation. 
An approaching man may, by the peculiar combination of size, 
rate of approach, gestures, facial expression, and cries which 
he offers, and by the peculiar combination of darkness, familiar 
surroundings, human companionship and physical contact, full 
stomach, wakefulness and so on characteristic of the concomi- 
tant situation, draw on a score of different responses. 

There are also very many responses in the shape of inhibi- 
tions, facilitations, releases and readinesses of other responses. 
Man's nervous system provides not only a mechanism to make 
him run, but also probably other niechanisms which prevent or 
stop the former from acting, or make it act more vigorously, 
or start it acting, or put it in readiness to act. 

In none of the higher animals is original nature of the sim- 
ple cup-and-saucer, lock-and-key plan ; and in man the com- 
plexity has so far baffled description. It is intellectual cheat- 
ing to evade the difficulty by postulating magic powers like 
'fear' which responds to 'danger;' but even the most honest 
effort goes nearly bankrupt in the face of the obligations of a 
matter-of-fact account of so intricate an organization of con- 
nections. The original tendencies of man act piece-mea*l and 
in combinations. The potency of a situation is a compound of 
forces. Its bonds are real, but there are so many of them 
that the best of inventories, if brief, would have to be a 
caricature. 



SUMMARY,, CRITICISM AND CLASSIFICATION 19/ 

THE VARIABILITY OF MEN IN ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 

Could we define and measure the exact original nature of 
all human beings they would by no means be duplicates. In- 
deed, save by chance, no two would be absolutely so.* The 
structural arrangements or chemical constituents of the fertil- 
ized ovum which is the beginning of a human life are capable 
of a practical infinity of permutations and combinations. The 
eleven thousand millions of neurones in which the original 
connection system soon manifests itself probably never pos- 
sess in two men identical connections and degrees of readi- 
ness to act. Gross external behavior does not misrepresent, 
but illustrates, everywhere the variability of men around the 
type of the human species. 

In a later volume some account will be given of the nature 
and causation of individual intellects and characters, the in- 
ventory of this volume being obviously only a general sketch 
of the original nature of man as a species. 

THE MODIFIABILITY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 

In order to describe original tendencies at all, it is desirable 
to abstract strictly from the changes which they undergo by 
virtue of their mutual action, especially of the action of exer- 
cise and effect upon all the others. But in order to describe 
them truly, it is necessary to add to such a list of abstracted 
tendencies the codicil or reservation that the action of each 
at any time is conditioned by the man's experiences up to that 
time and is modified for the future by its own consequences. 

The original nature of man contains within itself a prin- 
ciple of change, and the circumstances of the life led by mod- 
ern man metamorphose almost every original tendency into 
habits which are much unlike it — even directly contrary to It. 
The old verbal contrast between two mythical entities — 'in- 
stinct' and 'intelligence' — left an unfortunate disposition 
amongst psychologists to separate the habits formed with train- 

*Except possibly a certain very small percentage of twin pairs. 



198 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ing sharply from the instincts given by nature. In the last 
resort all habits are formed in the service of instincts, and 
the great majority of human instincts function by being modi- 
fied through training. Original nature and acquired nature do 
not exist side by side as alien races. The latter is generated 
from the former and combines back with it to form new 
hybrids. The original tendencies which have been listed in 
these chapters are less important in the cases where they mani- 
fest themselves nakedly as I have described them than in the 
more numerous cases where, disguised and transformed by 
training, they are constituent elements of the eventual nature 
of man. 

A SUMMARY OF MAN's ORIGINAL NATURE 

These intricacies, combined with the insufficiency of knowl- 
edge, make the tasks of summary and classification well-nigh 
impossible. 

It certainly is impossible to summarize the original na- 
ture of man without great risk of misleading. The inventory 
which has been made is, indeed, itself, too condensed to do full 
justice to the elaborate mental organization with which man 
meets his environment. But, accepting the risk, one may say 
that the original nature of man is roughly what is common to 
all men minus all adaptations to tools, houses, clothes, furni- 
ture, words, beliefs, religions, laws, science, the arts, and to 
whatever in other man's behavior is due to adaptations to them. 
From human nature as we find it, take away, first, all that is 
in the European but not in the Chinaman, all that is in the 
Fiji Islander but not in the Esquimaux, all that is local or 
temporary. Then take away also the effects of all products 
of human art. What is left of human intellect and character 
is largely original — not wholly, for all those elements of 
knowledge which we call ideas and judgments must be sub- 
tracted from his responses. Man originally possesses only 
capacities which after a given amount of education will pro- 
duce ideas and judgments. And from the situations to which 



SUMMARY, CRITICISM AND CLASSIFICATION I99 

he originally responds, must also be subtracted all ideas and 
judgments; for, again, his original tendencies are bound only 
to direct sense-presentations and feelings. To ideas, when he 
gets them, he responds originally only as he would to some 
direct presentations which they sufficiently resemble. Much, 
perhaps nine-tenths, of what commonly passes for distinctively 
human nature is thus not in man originally, but is put there by 
institutions or grows there, by the interaction of the world of 
natural forces and the capacity to learn. To reduce the chance 
of misleading, the original nature of man may be summarized 
also by listing its essential differences from that of the primates 
in general. Consider the intellectual and moral equipment of 
the monkeys. Add to it certain important social instincts, 
notably those connected with the more refined facial expres- 
sions and the approval-disapproval series. Increase in inten- 
sity and breadth the satisfyingness of mental life for its own 
sake, widen the repertory of movements to include human facial 
expressions, finger and thumb play and articulated babble, en- 
rich the fund of indifferent possibilities of secondary connec- 
tions and give them the tendency to piece-meal action in very 
fine detail. The result will be substantially the original nature 
of man. 

CRITICISMS 

There is wide disagreement regarding the extent to which 
human thought, feeling and action are predetermined by nature 
irrespective of experience. According to one extreme view, so 
extreme that it might not now be endorsed by any competent 
psychologist, nothing is given by nature save the capacities to 
feel elementary sensations and affections and to malve elemen- 
tary muscular contractions. The child of himself responds at 
random, and, except for chance, alike, to a smile and to a scowl. 
So far as his own nature goes, he is as likely to reach away 
from an object fixated as toward it; as likely to swim, roll or 
burrow as to walk ; and as likely to begin to walk on his hands 
as on his feet. 

The other extreme is well represented by Stanley Hall, who 



200 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

credits the original nature of man to-day with possessing in 
some degree nearly or quite all the tendencies which the race, 
even down to historical times, has acquired. Hall says, for 
instance : — 

''Every element has shaped and tempered it (the 'psyche' 
or 'ego' or 'soul' or original nature of man). Its long expe- 
rience with light and darkness, day and night, has fashioned 
its rhythm indelibly. Heat and cold, the flickering of flame, 
smoke and ashes, especially since man learned the control of 
fire, have oriented it toward both thermal extremes. Cloud 
forms have almost created the imagination. Water and a long 
apprenticeship to aquatics and arboreal life have left as plain and 
indelible marks upon the soul as upon the body. Sky, wind, 
stars, storms, fetichism, flowers, animals, ancient battles, ini- 
dustries, occupations, and worship have polarized the soul to 
fear and affection, and created anger and pity." ['04, vol. 2, 
p. 69.] 

The inventory given in the last eight chapters will be 
criticised by many who prefer to explain intellect and character 
so far as they can, by a tabula rasa plus experience. They 
will regard it as intolerably lenient in admitting sheltering, 
specific fears, six or more specialized 'pugnacities,' mastery and 
submission, approval and scorn, and others of its main features. 

An attempt to refute this contention that these forms of be- 
havior are learned in the school of life would involve a survey 
of details in the behavior of man which rs utterly beyond the 
scope of this volume. Nor would such a survey be conclusive. 
The general frame of mind which one gets, doubtless in part 
by sheer prejudice, from observing human behavior and 
others' reports of it, directs his decision in problems like these, 
where crucial tests are lacking : I could not prove the originality 
of these tendencies to myself. As was made clear at the outset, 
the inventory is in large measure the result of the author's un- 
supported observations and intuitions : and these are doubtless 
often in error. 

That the inventor}^ is much too generous to original nature 
may, however, be doubted in view of two facts of prime im- 
portance to one's general expectations from original nature. 



SUMMARY^ CRITICISM AND CLASSIFICATION 20I 

First, the inventory here is really less generous than one 
which smuggles in a host of specialized tendencies under the 
guise of general faculties such as 'anger at opposition,' 'curios- 
ity,' 'imitation' and 'ideo-motor action.' If man did origin- 
ally make any movement or produce any sound which was 
made in his presence, the detail and complexity of the pre- 
formed connections for this one tendency would be greater 
than for all those listed in my inventory. The original frame- 
work of human nature is not simplified by replacing all the 
special bonds involved in escape from restraint, overcoming a 
moving obstacle, contra-attack, violence at sudden pain, com- 
bat in rivalry, maintenance of isolation in courtship, and re- 
sponses to various thwartings, by one faculty — anger — which 
has the inherent power of being aroused by very many situa- 
tions and of expressing itself in very many acts. Unless this 
anger is roused absolutely at haphazard and expresses itself 
just as probably by one movement as by any other, some spe- 
cial original bond is required between every one of the elements 
which can excite it and every one of the movements to which 
each such element leads. There is no gain in simplicity by fab- 
ricating an agency like anger or fear or sociability or curiosity 
to connect certain responses with certain situations. If it is 
not a set of mechanisms complex enough to make the connec- 
tions, such a fabricated agency is nothing but a name for their 
possibility. Giving a single name to a compound fact does not 
simplify it. 

The second fact of importance is that, if we hold to the mat- 
ter-of-fact question of the unlearnedness of direct connections 
between observed situations and observed responses, impartial 
research has found new instincts in almost every field. The 
same studies which destroy confidence in 'instinct' as a faculty 
of all-around guidance, or in imitation as a tendency to create 
bonds between an act observed and the performance of the act, 
have lent support to the expectation that many more direct orig- 
inal connections exist in man than even the most generous list 
of twenty years ago included. 



202 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

The inventory given in this vohime will be criticised as too 
meager in one or another detail by students of various special 
human activities who have assumed, each for the activity in 
which he is interested, a more elaborate instinctive basis than 
I have described. It may be criticised as too meager through- 
out by those students of human nature who, like Stanley Hall, 
expect that the traits acquired by primitive and even recent gen- 
erations of men have left their impress on original nature. 

The following are samples of such possible criticisms : — No 
special religious instinct is listed here in spite of the univer- 
sality of certain phenomena. No innate difference of response 
to 'right' from that to 'wrong' acts is listed here, in spite of the 
opinions of a majority of students of ethics and the authority 
of Lloyd Morgan, who says emphatically : 

"Among civilized people conscience is innate. Intuitions 
of right and wrong are a part of that moral nature which we 
have inherited from our forefathers. Just as we inherit com- 
mon sense, an instinctive judgment in intellectual matters, so 
too do we inherit that instinctive judgment in matters of right 
and wrong which forms an important element in conscience." 

['85, P- 307.] 

No report Is made here of special tendencies to respond to the 

common animals which man has had under domestication for 
long ages and which, according to Stanley Hall, as quoted by 
Kaylor ['09], originally evoke a special affectionate interest, 
Acher ['10] tho far from clear, seems to think that digging 
caves and underground passages, burying objects, collecting, 
piling, throwing and hammering with stones, throwing snow- 
balls, working and playing with strings, stabbing and cutting 
with edged objects, striking, whipping and pounding with ap- 
propriate objects are specific tendencies. Such would be ex!- 
pected to be original tendencies if man's past history has be- 
come ingrained in his inborn nature, but have been deliberately 
excluded from my list. The tendency to play in water, splash- 
ing it about with hands and feet, may seem on grounds of uni- 
versality and of persistence in spite of prohibitions and pun- 
ishment, more deserving of a place amongst unlearned responses 



SUMMARY, CRITICISM AND CLASSIFICATION 2O3 

than attempted mastery, kindliness, and other forms of be- 
havior included in my list. Bolton, for example, writes that : 

"This universal love for water seems not to be due to ex- 
perience alone, for all babes exhibit it in their earliest days, if 
conditions are supplied. It seems partly instinctive and of 
more than recent philogenic [sic] origin, and at least suggests 
a survival of the old-time life in an aquatic medium. This 
is not demonstrable, but the weight of all testimony is in that 
direction. How else can we account for the passionate love 
of children to paddle, to splash, ride on rafts, run out in the 
rain ; for their intense delight in swimming, even going without 
meals, walking long distances, enduring severe punishments, 
etc., just for the sake of being in the water Many of these 
characteristics are exhibited by adults when the convention- 
alities of civilized life can be thrown off." ['99, p. 226.] 

Against this last sample criticism I may offer a brief note 
of defense. It is, in my opinion, probable that the love of 
paddling, wading and swimming is wholly or in large measure 
due to the love of 'doing something and having something 
happen as a result,' and to the increased freedom of the body 
when fewer or more comfortable clothes are worn. Water is 
enjoyed in large measure for the same reasons that a sand-pile, 
a roomful of toys or a gymnasium is enjoyed. Merely being 
wet, as when wrapped in a wet sheet, is certainly not the situa- 
tion producing the satisfaction. The baby perhaps enjoys 
being naked in the warm air even more than taking his bath. 
Children at the beach play out of the water with apparently as 
great enjoyment as in it. The argument from the common- 
ness of aquatic life in our animal ancestry which Bolton em- 
phasizes is, I think, against any specific original tendency in 
man to be drawn to, and to be satisfied by being in, the water 
per se. For the early generalized primate stock from which 
man probably sprang, probably instinctively az/oided immer- 
sion, as do the present primates. Robinson seems sounder in 
his claim that the original human response to sinking or being 
suspended in water, is the generalized-primate response to lack 
of support. He says that in such a case man 
"acts exactly as if he were endeavoring to climb. His 



204 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

hands are alternately thrust upwards, with open clutching fin- 
gers, as if to grasp something above his head, and his legs 
move in tmison with his arms in the same way as do those of 
an ape which is mounting a tree. That is to say, the limbs on 
the same side are lifted coincidently, as they are when a sailor 
is going aloft. There is a remarkable uniformity in the be- 
havior of persons who cannot swim who find themselves sud- 
denly immersed in deep water, which also strongly suggests 
that some instinctive tendency, inherent in, and possessed 
by, all human beings, is the prompter on such occasions." 
['93, p. 728.] 

As was stated in Chapter IV, the inventory does not in- 
clude all the tendencies which I myself regard as unlearned. 
Consequently I should agree with many criticisms of its incom- 
pleteness. Important tendencies, such as the general moral 
sense referred to by Lloyd Morgan, w^ould, however, have 
been included if I had seen reason to believe in their unlearn- 
edness. The detailed consideration of such proposed additions 
to this inventory is out of the question here. 

Space permits only two general principles of decision. One 
is that where some selfish interest or specialized doctrine has 
sought to establish itself by pleading the existence of a certain 
original tendency in man as a species, I have been suspicious 
and perhaps over-skeptical. For example, the origin of the 
plea that the love of ownership in the modern sense of prop- 
erty rights is the instinctive response to material objects and 
the instinctive situation evoking thought and labor, has possibly 
prejudiced me against it. The other is entire repudiation of 
the doctrine that the learning of past generations becomes the 
unlearned tendencies of the present. If umbrellas had been 
invented five thousand generations ago and carried whenever it 
rained by every one of my ancestors since then, I should still 
not expect a trace of an original tendency on my part to carry 
an umbrella on a rainy day. This principle will be defended 
in Chapter XV. 



SUMMARY^ CRITICISM AND CLASSIFICATION 205 

TPIE CLASSIFICATION OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 

There are many rational classifications possible for man's 
original equipment, each having certain advantages. The im- 
portant classifications are : — 

By the functions which the tendencies perform 

By the responses which are their end-terms. 
'-'-^y the situations which are their first-terms. 

By their origin or affinities in development. 

Classifications by function are commonest. Such have the 
advantage that the existing accounts of human instincts and 
capacities can be fitted to them easily. Since these accounts 
describe original tendencies by their results, rather than by the 
situations and responses which compose them, this is the only 
one of the four systems of classification which they suggest and 
the only one by which they can, as they stand, be ordered. This 
is also a disadvantage, however, in that it discourages more 
objective and exact descriptions of the tendencies. As a sample 
we may take that made by Kirkpatrick and quoted below. 
['03, pp. 51-63.] It is one of the best of this type. 

I. Individualistic or Self-Preservative Instincts 

Feeding 
Fearing 
Fighting 

II. Parental Instincts 

Sex and courtship instincts 
Sing-ing 
Self-exhibition 
Fighting for mates 
Nest building 

III. Group or Social Instincts 

To arrange themselves in groups 

To cooperate for the common good in attack and 

defense 
Seeking companionship 

Desiring the approval of the group which one joins 
Pride 
Ambition 
Rivalry 



206 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Jealousy 

Embarrassment 

Shame 

IV. Adaptive Instincts 

Tendency to spontaneous movement 

Tendency for nervous energy to take the same course 

that has just been taken 
Tendency to imitation 
Tendency to play 
Tendency to curiosity 

V. Regulative Instincts 

The moral tendency to conform to law 

The religious tendency to regard a higher power 

VI. Resultant and Miscellaneous Instincts and Feelings 
The tendency to collect objects of various kinds and 

to enjoy their ownership 

The tendency to construct or destroy and the pleasure 
of being a power or a cause 

The tendency to express mental states to others of 
the species and to take pleasure in such expression 

The tendency to adornment, and the making of beau)- 
tiful things, and the aesthetic pleasure of contem- 
plating such objects 

No one, to the author's knowledge, has attempted to classify 
man's tendencies by their situations, for instance, into original 
behavior toward heat, cold, light-waves of each length, and 
so on through an orderly grouping of all the states of affairs 
which originally move man, though such a classification was 
doubtless in the mind of Stanley Hall when he arranged 
for his investigations of human behavior toward water, trees, 
clouds, frost, dogs, and the like. Classification by situations 
seems, at first sight, the most scientific of all four, and would 
be an impetus toward careful analysis of and experimentation 
with original tendencies. To provoke by one's classification, 
the questions : — 'What does man, apart from training, do to 
white, black, red and yellow ? To a temperature of twenty de- 
grees, thirty degrees, forty degrees, fifty degrees ? To falling, 
being in motion, being at rest? To wind, snow, rain, stars, 



SUMMARY, CRITICISM AND CLASSIFICATION 207 

sun, moon? To human beings old, young, single, in a crowd? 
— is to make at least one step toward a usable account of what 
man's original nature is. But such a classification is very 
laborious and becomes enormously complicated. For example, 
the same object may be a different situation in each of its dis- 
tances, or with each possible adjunct. It also is the case that 
no one of the stock classifications of external states of affairs — 
such as animal, vegetable, mineral, with the further group- 
ings into vertebrate, invertebrate, and so on — is specially ger- 
mane to original human behavior. Such a classification then, 
though it would be, if minute enough, a valuable stimulus 
and guide to research, would be somewhat pedantic, as a carrier 
of present knowledge, save in the case of responses of sensi- 
tivity. There it is of course already appropriate and already 
occasionally used. 

Classifications by responses have the advantage of economy 
over classifications by situations. For the variety of human 
original responses, though greater than one is likely to fancy 
until he has tried to classify them, is of an order of magnitude 
far below that of the variety of situations. The stimulus and 
guidance to thought and investigation will be about the same 
regardless of whether we order the events of the world and 
ask what man originally tends to do to each, or order the 
events in man and ask to what outside stimulus each is the 
original response. 

There is very great need for a series of painstaking studies 
of man's original responses to all the important things, events, ' 
qualities and relations in his environment. The foregoing 
chapters have shown how soon one comes to a stop when he 
tries to decide what man would, apart from training, think 
and feel and do in response to something rather than nothing, 
change and monotony, motion and rest, sour, bitter, sweet, 
salt, black, white, red, blue, wind, snow, rain, sunshine, water 
in each of its common forms, the various facial expressions 
and gestures and vocal sounds of man, etc., etc., etc. 

There is great need also for a similar series of thorough- 



208 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

going studies of just what the situations are which, apart from 
training, evoke the important movements of man's muscles and 
excitements of his neurones. We do not yet know surely what 
originally makes man laugh or cry, go to sleep and wake, 
smile and scowl, stiffen or tremble, or have the neurone actions 
corresponding to excitement, torpor, elation, depression, ten- 
sion or relief. We have seen, for example, that laughter has 
been the subject of special study by Darwin, Hecker, Spencer, 
Gross, Hall and Allin, Bergson, Dumas, Kline, Sully, and many 
others, but without the attainment of a satisfactory account of 
what originally (or for that matter, on the whole) arouses it. 
Borgquist, ['06] examining the returns from a questionnaire, 
lists forty-seven ( !) groups of causes of crying, but is unable 
to give an acceptable account of its original provocatives. 

In proportion as such studies are made, classifications by 
the situation concerned or by the response concerned will ac- 
company or replace classifications by the end attained. 

Classifications by affinities in the development of the race — 
that is, by descent — though hitherto unconsidered, perhaps 
offer the most scientific means of grouping and ordering orig- 
inal tendencies. These tendencies have evolved in the same 
wa}^ that the circulation of the blood or excretion by the kid- 
neys has evolved. Behavior as well as structure has its an- 
cestral tree. If we knew perfectly the history of behavior in 
the world, we could start from the responses of our first pro- 
genitors, the protozoa; see each new tendency appearing as a 
slight variation or larger mutation on the basis of the tenden- 
cies already present ; note which animals, and so which tenden- 
cies, had surviving offspring; and so group the tendencies of 
man according to their places in a genealogical table of instincts. 
Such a classification would be a 'scientific' or 'natural' one be- 
cause it would arrange man's instincts and capacities for pur- 
poses of study in an order corresponding to their genesis in 
the real world, and so incite students to note the elements in 
which heredity carries along man's equipment and the possi- 
bilities for its future evolution. 



chapter xiv 
The Anatomy and Physiology of Original Tendencies 

Intellect, character and skill have their physiological basis 
in the structure and activities of the neurones and accessory 
organs which compose vthe nervous system. The original 
nature of man in these respects depends on the original struc- 
ture and activities of the neurones. 

The neurones are essentially threads of specialized proto- 
plasm each connecting one part of the body with another. Like 
other elements of the body, they eat, excrete, grow and die; 
but their special functions in the animal's life are sensitivity, 
conductivity, and modifiahility. Sensitivity means the capacity 
to be excited to action at one end by one or many agencies, 
Conductivity means the capacity to transmit the action thus 
excited, or some consequence of it, to the other end of the 
neurone. Modifiahility means the capacity to change in ac- 
cordance with use shortly to be described. 

They are arranged in an elaborate system of receptors, 
easily accessible to important influences within and without the 
body, effectors in intimate connection with organs for action, 
and connectors which lead from the receptors to the effectors. 
Each neurone of this total system has its special connections 
with the outside world, with the other organs of the body, or 
with other neurones. 

the structure of the neurones 

Figures 4 and 5 show typical neurones, varying widely in 

shape, but maintaining the common element of a thread-like 

body suitable to put one part of the animal in touch with other 

parts — to conduct stimuli from one part of the body to another 

14 209 



2IO 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 




Fig. 4. A, B, C, and D. Four neurones. The discharging end of D is ROt 
fully shown, being far beyond the limits of the drawing. 
A is after Kolliker ['02, p. 834], after Marenghi. 
B is after K6Ilil<er ["06, p. 654]. 
C is after Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. 2, p. 175]. 
D is after Kolliker ['96, p. 349]. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 211 





rec. 





B 



Fig. 5. A, B, and C. Three neurones. The discharging ends of B and C are 
not shown, being far beyond the limits of the drawing. 
B is after Barker ['01, p. 70]. C is after Kolliker ['96, p. 46]. 



212 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

— to let what happens to one part influence what is done by 
another part. For convenience I have marked the receiving 
end in certain cases r, and the discharging or transmitting end 
dis. It should be noted that in the drawings the diameter of 
the neurones is necessarily enormously exaggerated in com- 
parison with their length. A neurone may be tv/o feet long, 
but so small in diameter that a hundred side by side would 
make a line no wider than one of the lines in the drawings. 

Figures 6 and 7 show representative structures where the 
receiving ends of the neurones are in connection with events 
outside or inside the body. 

Figures 8 and 9 show representative structures where the 
discharging ends of neurones are in connection with muscles. 

Figures 10, 11 and 12 show representative synapses or 
places of connection between the discharging end of one neurone 
and the receiving end of another neurone. 

THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE NEURONES 

Figures 13, 14 and 15 show, more or less schematically, 
certain cases of the arrangement of neurones in series to form 
conduction-lines or conduction-chains. The whole nervous 
system is a combination of millions of such conduction-chains. 
The neurones concerned in the behavior of a single man prob- 
ably exceed in number by a thousand- fold all the telephone 
lines* in the world, and a description of the details of their 
arrangement, if such were known, would be an almost endless 
task. 

Four general features of the original arrangement of man's 
neurones may be specially noted. First, the system as a whole 
is on the plan of a system of conduction-units running from 
parts of the body where events important to the life of the 
animal are 'sensed' or allowed to impress him, to parts of the 
body by which he 'reacts to' or adapts himself to, or changes 
his behavior as result of, these events, via a very complex 

^Counting as a "line" every wire length which acts as a unit. 



THE PPIYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 213 




Fig. 6. The receiving ends of various first sensory neurones, or receptors. 
A. Receiving ends around the base of hairs (in the mouse). 
E. Cross section of the tissue shown in A. 

C. Neurone endings in epithelial cells. 

D. Endings around pigment cells. 

E. An ending in the lining of the oesophagus. 

F. An ending in a tactile corpuscle. 

G. Endings in the papilla foliata; g, taste-buds with intra- and circum- 
gcmmule neurone-endings; i, j'jjjer-gemmule neurone endings. 

H. Endings of the rods and cones in the retina of man 

A, B, C, and D are after Eding^-r ['06, p. 42], C being after Bethe and 
D being after Eberth and Bvmee. E is after Barker ['01, p. 362], after Retzius. 
F is after Barkrr T'oi, p. 3S6], after Sniirnow. G and H are after Kolliker 
r'o2, p. 28 and p. 820]. 



214 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 





B 



■TxVb 





D 




Fig. 7. The receiving ends of various first sensory neurones or receptors (continued). 

A. Ends of neurones in the Lamina spiralis and organ of Corti. Ihe enaing 
marked ? may be a discharging end. 

B. Ends of the first olfactory neurones in the nose. 

C and D. Taste-buds and the receiving ends of gustatory neurones. 

E. A receiving end of a neurone in the macula acusUca saccnli. 

F. A sensory neurone ending in the skin. 

A is after KSlliker ['02, p. 952]- B is after Y^", ^'^h^^l^*"^ - ^ °°/e rkolVikw 
244]. C is after Barker [\)i, p. 527L after v. Lenhossek. I\ 'f,, f t^"; ^°'i'''^' 
['02 p. 29]. E is after Barker ['01, p. 502], after v. Leidios^ek. t IS 
after Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. 2, p. 372]- 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 21 5 




Fig. 8. 




Fig. 9. 

Fig. 8. The discharging end of a motor neurone on the gastrocnemius muscle 
of the frog. After Barker, after SchiefEerdecker, after W. Kuhne. 



Fig. 



The discharging ends of neurones in striped muscles of the white rat 
After Van Gehuchten ['oo, vol. i, p. 205]. 



2l6 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 




ax. 1 ] 



av. ax. 

Fig. 10. 




Fig. II. 



Fig. 10. The discharging ends of two neurones 'of the optic nei-ve (dis.) in 
synapse (sy.) with portions of the receiving ends of two neurones of the 
optic lobe. These two neurones are shown in part only in the figure. Their 
axones (ax.) continue far beyond the limits of the drawing. After Van 
Gehuchten ['oo, vol. 2, p. 250]. 

Fig. II. The olfactory receptors, or first sensory olfactory neurones (ol.), their 
discharging ends (dis.), in synapse (sy.) with the receiving ends (r.) of seven 
of the second sensory olfactory neurones. The axones of the latter (ax.) 
continue far beyond the limits of the drawing. After Van Gehuchten ['00, 
voJ. 2, p. 287J. 



switchboard or set of relay stations permitting a very great 
variety of combinations, recdirections, shuntings and retard- 
ations of the conducted currents. Second, in particular, there 
are arrangements whereby several neurones may discharge 
into one neurone as shown schematically in Figure i6, and in 
a real case in Fig. 17, so that there can be a convergence of 
stimuli separately initiated toward a common final path. Third, 
there are arrangements whereby one neurone may discharge 
into several neurones as shown schematically in Figure 18, and 
in a real case in Fig. 19, so that there may be a distribution or 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 21/ 




Fig. 12. A typical synapse in the cerebellar cortex. The discharging end-branch 
of a neurone intertwined with and applied closely to the surface of the 
receiving end of a Purkinje neurone. The former is shown in full black; 
the latter in stipple. The full detail of the latter is not shown. After Johnston 
['06, p. 241]. 



diffusion or varied transmission of one initial stimulus to many 
final paths. 

Fourth, the connecting-, or associative, or 'switchboard,' 
neurones form, especially in man, an apparatus for redirection 
of stimuli which is almost infinitely complex and which is 
extraordinarily apt for varied transmission, so that the same 
stimulus may, according- to minor cooperating conditions, be 
conducted to many different final paths, and so that many dif- 
ferent stimuli may, according to some common feature, be 
conducted to the same final path. The varieties of connections 
which appear in the case of the instincts of multiform mental 
and physical activity, curiosity, manipulation, visual explora- 
tion and vocalization, and in the millions of habits which 
develop from these instincts, have a fit mechanism in this very 
sensitive, very complex and very modifiable switchboard ar- 
rangement of man's neurones. 



2l8 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 





B 





Fig. 13. _ A, B, C, and D. The arrangement of neurones in series to form con- 
duction lines or continuous chains. A shows two neurones forming a chain 
from the skin (sk.) to the muscle (m.) via the synapse (sy.) in the spinal 
cord. B shows three neuronts forming a chain from the skin (sk.) to the 
muscle (m.) via the synapses sy. i and sy. 2. C shows at the bottom chains 
such as are shown in A and B except that the skin and receiving part of the 
first neurone are not shown. C shows, in the upper three-fourths of the diagram, 
parts of other chains, leading from the first or second sensory neurones to 
the_ cortex. D shows parts of chains leading from the cortex to the muscles. 
A is from Van Gchucliten ['00, vol. i, p. 517]. B is after Edinger ['96, p. 
;^i]. C and D are after Van Gchuchten ['00, vol. 2, p. 513 and p. 512]. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 



219 




Fig. 14. Shows the chain of neurones conducting stimuli from the olfactory sense 
organ to the Cornu Ammonis, (c. a.) and thence in various directions to make 
further connections. The neurones marked i, 2 and 3 designate in order the 
first three links of this chain, the synapse between the first and the second sets 
of neurones, the second and the third and so on being marked Si, Sii, and Siii. 
The neurones of group 2 shown cut off at a. c. are neurones which conduct 
across to the other hemisphere of the brain. After Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. 2, 
p. 294]. 

Fig. 15. Shows part of the chain of neurones which, beginning in the rods and 
cones of the retina, continue to tlie occipital lobe of the brain. The last two 
links in the chain are shown here — the neurones which form the sensory part 
of the optic nerve receiving stimuli in the retina and discharging across 
synapses in the corpora quadrigemina, external geniculate bodies and optic 
layer to neurones which conduct thence to the occipital lobe. After Van 
Gehuchten [00, vol. 2, p. 253]. 



fc20 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



> 



M P- 

FlG. 16. Schema of Convergence. 




Fig. 17. Convergence in the Olfactory Receptors. 



HI P- 




Fig. 18. Schema of Distribution. 




Fig. '9. Distribution in a Spinal Reflex Path. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 221 

All original bond between a situation and a response in 
human behavior has as its physiological basis an original ease 
of conduction of the physiological action aroused in certain 
neurones toward a certain final path rather than toward any 
other. The original arrangement of the neurones whereby 
the discharging end of a given neurone A, is near to the receiv- 
ing ends of B, C, D, etc., and remote from the receiving ends 
of X, Y, Z, etc., is the main determinant of what responses of 
sensation and movement the given situation will provoke. 
Original connections in behavior depend in large part upon the 
original location of neurones in the brain — the orig'inal dis- 
tances between the discharging ends of the neurones severally 
and the receiving ends of all others. 

They may depend upon other facts also. The synapses 
between the discharging end of A and the receiving ends of 
B, C, and D might conceivably be identical, so far as concerns 
the distances A,, to B . A,, to C,., and A^- to D_ ; and yet 

dis r dis i Qis r ' J 

the ease of conduction might be very different in the three 
cases. Just as three membranes may vary in permeability by a 
certain substance, or as three joints, one of copper, one of gold 
and one of rubber, would vary in resistance to the electric cur- 
rent, so the three synapses — A->-B, A->-C and A->-D — may 
vary in resistance to the sjtimuli conducted by A, otherwise than 
by differences in mere distance. If there were such variations 
in the permeability of 'synapses of equal distances,' and if they 
were original in man, they would be a second determinant of 
the path that any given stimulus would take — and so of the 
response that any given situation would originally provoke. 
Proximity of neurones in space, then, there must be as a basis 
for connections in behavior; a nerve impulse cannot jump an 
inch from the discharging end of one to the receiving end of 
another. Permeability of some special sort may be an addi- 
tional requirement. 



222 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

SENSITIVITY AND CONDUCTIVITY 

About the detailed physiology of sensitivity — the capacity 
of a neurone to be aroused by certain events at its receiving 
end (or, much less frequently, along its course) — very little is 
known. That little is not specially relevant to our purpose. 
The same is true of conductivity within a single neurone. 
What the action of a neurone is, whereby something happening 
at the receiving end makes something happen at the discharg- 
ing end, is unknown; and the acceptance of one or another of 
the various present hypotheses would not alter any conclusion 
to be stated here. Conductivity over a chain of neurones in- 
volves obviously sensitivity, discharge, and conduction across 
the synapses, as well as mere conductivity within the neurones 
taken singly. That there is some specialized action correspond- 
ing to the discharge and conduction across the synapse seems 
probable, but what it is cannot be affirmed. 

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE CAPACITY TO LEARN AND OF 

i READINESS 

The modifiability of a neurone might consist in changes in 
it: — (i) whereby its form was altered so that its receiving 
end was in different spatial relations to the stimulating agents, 
or so that its discharging end was in different spatial relations 
to the neighboring receiving ends; (2) whereby its receiving 
end was more or less sensitive to forces acting on it; (3) 
whereby it offered more or less resistance as a conductor, or 
otherwise changed its conducting action; (4) whereby it dis- 
charged in a different way, or (5) whereby other differences 
were produced. 

Its modifications in the course of growth obviously include 
the first sort — alterations of its spatial relations, — as is shown 
roughly in Figures 20 and 21. So also do the modifications 
produced in it by certain diseases. What modifications are 
produced in a neurone by its own ordinary activities are mat- 
ters largely for hypothesis. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 



223 




Fig. 20. 




Fig. 31. 

Fig. 20. Immature neurones in a section of half of the spinal cord of a chick 
at the third day of incubation. After Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. i, p. 2B2], 
after Ramon y Cajal. Ihe neurones shown here will grow to a complexity 
equal to that of those shown in Figs. 4 and 5. The ends of the five neurones 
shown under s. which run toward the centre of the diagram will grow into 
the spinal cord to form long axones with many collaterals each branching in 
an elaborate terminal arborization in close proximity to some associative or 
motor neinone; the other ends of these neurones will grow out to the surface 
of the skin or elsewhere. 

The four neurones at the left of m. will grow out into the body to connect 
with certain muscle fibres. The other neurones will also grow in such 3 
way that their ends assume special space relations to the ends of other sensory 
or motor neurones. The two ends of neurones at g. are growing parts or 
growing 'cones.' 

Fig. 21. Neurones in various stages of growth. A very early stage is shown at 
a; a somewhat later stage at b; neurones whose receiving ends have_ some- 
thing like their eventual complexity are shown at c. After v. Lenhossek ['95, 
p. 92]. 



224 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

The safest provisional hypothesis to make about the action 
of the neurones singly is, in my opinion, that they retain the 
modes of behavior common to unicellular animals so far as is 
consistent with the special conditions of their life as elements 
in man's nervous system. This conservative hypothesis, to- 
gether with the unanalyzed facts of sensitivity, conductivity 
and the general facts of the arrangement of neurones, gives a 
fair working hypothesis concerning the physiological basis of 
the original satisfiers and annoyers, and of the capacities for 
learning and remembering — that is, of the laws of exercise and 
effect.* 

The hypothesis is, very, very briefly, as follows : The life- 
processes of a neurone are (i) eating, (2) excreting waste 
products, (2) growing, (4) being sensitive, conducting- and 
discharging and (5) movement. The movements or changes 
of position made by it are restricted to its ends. It may then 
be, according to its physiological state, more or less ready or 
unready, disposed or indisposed, to eat, to excrete, to grow, to 
play its part in receiving and passing on a stiniiihis, and to 
move. Activity in receiving and passing on a stimulus makes 
it ready to eat. When its life-processes, other than movement, 
are going on well, it continues whatever movement-activity 
it is engaged in ; when its life-processes, other than movement, 
are interfered with, it manifests whatever movements such 
interference evokes until the interference ceases. The move- 
ments possible for it are slight extensions or retractions at its 
ends (including the ends of its collaterals). 

The neurone then lives much as would an amoeba or para- 

*The attempt made here to give a physiology of the adaptive element 
in learning — ^of modifiability in favor of the satisfying — is too premature 
and speculative to be of much value ; and the discussion of it, vv^ithout 
reliance upon technical acquaintance with the physiology of the neurones 
and the behavior of the micro-organisms, is necessarily inadequate. I 
have abbreviated it as much as 4s consistent with giving the reader some 
idea of how the complexities of human behavior may be found in the 
end to reduce to compounds of very simple behavior-series in the 
neurones. The reader who finds it puzzling or uninstructive may pass 
by the rest of this chapter. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 225 

iiiecium which had been differentiated to make conduction its 
special trade and which had become fixed immovably save for 
a few extremities here and there.* For the life-processes of 
eating, excretion and growth to go on well (or to be interfered 
with) means much the same in the case of the neurone as in 
the case of any single-celled animal. 

For the life-process of receiving and passing on a stimulus 
to go on well means that only such stimuli are being received 
as can be discharged, and that enough stimuli are being re- 
ceived and discharged to prevent any inner disturbance due to 
the lack of such activity. Interference with the life-process of 
receiving and passing on a stimulus may be by the reception of 
stimuli too strong or too long-continued to be discharged, 
or by inner disturbances which adequate conductive activity 
would relieve. 

If this hypothesis proved to be correct, conduction by a 
conduction unit ready to conduct would be restated as the re- 
lief of interference until the life-processes of the neiir'ones con- 
cerned — relief by the destruction of an inner disturbance by 
means of adequate conductive activity. For a conduction unit 
ready to conduct not to conduct, would mean that such an 
inner disturbance remained. Conduction by a conduction unit 
unready to conduct would be restated as interference with the 
life-processes of the neurones concerned by the receipt of a too 
intense or too long-continued stimulus. 

If this hypothesis proved to be correct, the capacity to learn 
and remember could find its physiological basis in the move- 
ment-process of the neurones. A modifiable neurone would, 
by the hypothesis, maintain that movement-action — and so 
those spatial relations with other neurones — whereby its life- 
processes other than movement went on well. Now, for the 
neurone's life-processes of receiving and transmitting stimuli 
to go on well in a given state of affairs is the physiological fact 

*Just that is essentially what has^ happened in the differentiation of 
nerve-cells from generalized body-cells. 
IS 



226 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

that we mean when we say that the state of affairs is satisfying 
to the animal. For this conductive process in the neurones to 
be interfered with in a given state of affairs is the physiological 
fact that we mean when we say that the state of affairs is 
annoying.* By the hypothesis, in the latter case the neurones 
move so as to hold some new spatial relation to neighboring 
neurones. The neurones are, then, by the hypothesis, widen- 
ing the gaps in those synapses conduction across which causes 
discomfort ; are trying other spatial relations ; and are main- 
taining those spatial relations — preserving the intimacy of 
those synapses — conduction across which causes satisfaction. 

Each neurone, by so moving as to preserve a healthy con- 
dition in its workings as a receiving and transmitting organ, 
v.'-ould be giving up those synaptic bonds conduction across 
which produced annoying states of affairs, and maintaining 
those which produced satisfaction. The law of effect would 
be a secondary result of the ordinary avoiding reaction of uni- 
cellular organisms cooperating as elements in the animal's brain. 
The acquired connections of mean's intellect and character 
v/ould be the result of the unlearned tendencies of his neurones 
to do nothing different when all was well with them and to 
perform whatever different acts were in their repertories when 
their life-processes were disturbed. The learning of an animal 
would be the product of the unlearned responses of its neurones. 

In the above argument I have, chiefly to make a somewhat 

*The student who is interested in comparing the hypothesis presented 
here with others to the same purpose will find an admirably clear and 
systematic discussion of many of the early theories of the physiological 
basis of desirability and intolerability in Chapters IV and V of Marshall 
1'93]- This author uses the terms pleasure and pain to include, not only 
certain special voluptuous sensations and the sensations due to burns, 
pricks, inflammations and the like, but also the feeling-tone of any exper- 
ience, whereby a man, apart from any objective feature of the experience, 
would judge it to be intrinsically desirable or undesirable. His problem 
is therefore, specifically, that of discovering the physiological basis of the 
conscious states which would, in and of themselves, be satisfiers and 
annoyers. But the theories which he describes and the evidence which 
he discusses bear on the wider problem. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 22/ 

subtle theory easier to understand, assumed movement — spatial 
change — as a life-process of the neurones. But a?iy process 
whereby the neurone changes the nature of its connections with 
other neurones will serve all the purposes of the argument. The 
reader may, for instance, substitute appropriate terms referring 
to 'the greater or less permeability of a membrane' in every 
case where, in the last two pages, I have used 'movement of the 
end of a neurone in one direction or in another.' The essence 
of my account of the physiological mechanism of learning may 
be stated as follows, independently of any hypothesis about 
the power of the ends of a neurone to move. "The connections 
formed between situation and response are represented by con- 
nections between neurones and neurones whereby the disturb- 
ance, or neural current, arising in the former is conducted to 
the latter across their synapses. The strength or weakness of 
a connection means the greater or less likelihood that the same 
current will be conducted from the former to the latter rather 
than to some other place. The strength or weakness of the 
connection is a condition of the synapse. What condition of 
the synapse it is remains a matter for hypothesis. Close con- 
nection might mean protoplasmic union, or proximity of the 
neurones in space, or a greater permeability of a membrane, or 
a lowered electrical resistance, or a favorable chemical condi- 
tion of some other sort. Let us call this undefined condition 
which parallels the strength of a connection between situation 
and response the intimacy of the synapse. Then the modifia- 
bility or connection-changing of a neurone equals its power to 
alter the intimacy of its synapses." 

"A neurone modifies the intimacy of its synapses so as to 
keep intimate those by whose intimacy its other life-processes 
are favored and to weaken the intimacy of those whereby its 
other life-processes are hindered." When its feeding, excre- 
tory and conducting processes are going on well, it leaves 
whatever condition obtains at the synapse, undisturbed. When, 
on the contrary, feeding, excretion or conduction is disturbed, 
it makes whatever changes in its synapses it is capable of. 



228 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Thus certain synaptic intimacies are strengthened and others 
weakened, the result being the modifiabihty of the animal as a 
whole which we call learning. The simple avoiding-reaction 
of the protozoa, inherited by the neurones of the brain, is the 
basis of the intelligence of man. The learning of an animal 
is an instinct of its neurones.* 

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DELAY AND TRANSITORINESS IN 
ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 

The physiological basis of the delay of certain original 
tendencies till various periods after the beginning of the indi- 
vidual's life, and of the waning of transitory instincts in cases 
where they have not been preserved as habits by adequate en- 
couragement, is the waxing and waning of certain spatial 
arrangements of neurones, of lowered resistances at certain 
synapses, and of the readiness and unreadiness of certain 
neurones to receive and transmit stimuli. 

Neurones grow, so that the discharging end of neurone A 
may be very much nearer the receiving end of neurone B at the 
age of ninety months than it was at the age of nine. They 
may, and probably do, abort in part, so that by age and disuse 
neurone C may be in less intimate synapse with neurone D at 
ninety months than at nine. Whatever, other than spatial 
proximity, makes a synapse intimate, may similarly wax and 
wane by the mere impulse of inner growth. The neurones that 
were disturbed by failure to conduct in childhood may, by the 
mere inner changes of maturity, come in youth to be disturbed 
by conduction. What is the healthful amount of stimulus for 
certain neurones in youth may in old age be an intolerable bur- 
den to them. 

The rise of new original tendencies year by year after birth 
does not, probably, imply the addition by growth of new neu- 
rones. That process is completed or nearly completed very 

*The matter quoted above is from the author's Animal Intelligence 
['n, p. 246 f.]. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINx\L TENDENCIES 229 

early.* Nor does the loss of transitory instincts probably 
imply, as a rule, the death and absorption of once active neu- 
rones. These commonly remain, but with different or inactive 
connections. 

The physiological parallel most often assigned to the 
development of delayed instincts and capacities in educational 
literature, is the medidlation of the neurones concerned there- 
with. Thus Hall, in summarizing Flechsig's view, says that 
'medullation, myelinization, or the sheathing of the fibres . . . 
is generally held to be the surest concomitant of the develop- 
ment of their function.' ['04, vol. i, p. 109] Burk says: 
"The conclusion has now passed into general acceptance that 
when a nerve fibre acquires its fatty sheath, or becomes medul- 
lated as is said, it is then functionally mature. . . . The sig- 
nificance of medullation, once established, becomes a key of 
great value in determining- the order in which the various 
parts of the nervous system develop." ['98, p. 12 f.] 

This hypothesis — that the formation of the medullary or 
myelin sheath about the neurone along the part of its course 
where such a sheath is usual, is necessary in order that the 
neurone be able to function — seems from later work to be 
gratuitous and improbable. There is no need to suppose that 
the absence of a myelin sheath debars a neurone from function- 
ing or that its presence gives much aid thereto. None of the 
neurones in invertebrates have the myelin sheath. It is most 
probably a means of better insulation. Watson, who subjected 
the question to experimental tests in the case of the rat, found 
no such correlation between the progress of medullation and 
progress in intellect and skill, and says, in conclusion : "Why 
one tract should become medullated sooner than another we can 
at present answer in the case of the man no better than in the 
case of the rat." ['03, p. 122] 

^Donaldson ['95, pp. 160, 161 and 171] estimates that the process is 
completed as early as the third foetal month. 



chapter xv 
The Source of Original Tendencies 

The original nature of a man is, in the last analysis, the 
union of germ and ovum from which he develops. In that 
union his individual life begins. 

Hence, the first step in a straightfoi'ward attempt to find 
out the origin and development of unlearned tendencies would 
be to find out to what features in the fertilized ovum each was 
due. The originating forces, whatever they are, have pro- 
duced the instincts and capacities of the animal by producing 
these substances and structures in the germs. Knowledge of 
the constitution of the germs is needed if we are to trace his 
nature to its source. That knowledge, unfortunately, is for 
the most part lacking. No biologist could tell from examining 
a fertilized ovum what instincts it would in its later life dis- 
play, nor could he tell from full knowledge of an animal's 
instincts what corresponding features to expect in its germ 
cells. Of not a single instinct do we know the germ basis or 
determiner. 

Science is consequently forced for the present to argue from 
present behavior to ancestral behavior with only the vaguest 
knowledge of the germs which are the connecting link. The 
question has to be framed concerning what in our ancestors 
produces a given tendency in us, irrespective of the middle 
stage, the facts in the germs which carry the fund of tendencies 
from them to us. 

The familiar answers to this question are, as is well known, 
(i) that unlearned tendencies are inherited habits, the perpet- 
uation as a gift of what was once acquired by experience, and 
(2) that they are inherited germinal variations, produced by 

230 



THE SOURCE OF OiaCINAL TENDENCIES 23I 

subtle forces, not by the learning of individuals, and perpet- 
uated because the individuals possessing them produced more, 
or longer-lived, offspring. 

THE HYPOTHESIS OF THE TRANSMISSION OF ACQUIRED TRAITS 

Whether we are by nature* what our parents were by nature 
alone or what they were by nature plus training, may be 
argued from two points of view. The probability of the latter 
event may be estimated from our knowledge of the physical 
relations between parents and offspring ; or its actual occurrence 
may be determined from evidence. It is beyond the purpose 
of this book to present even a summary of such arguments pro 
and con. Indeed, except for the need of a statement limited 
to the inheritance of acquired mental traits, it would be unwise 
to add a new chapter to the voluminous discussions already in 
print.f 

Some matters seem fairly sure. 

1. Whatever changes occur in the nature of the chromatic 
substance in the nuclei of the germs and ova of the parents will 
influence the original nature of the offspring, for the nuclei of 
the germ and ovum are the original nature of the offspring. 
And nothing else will. 

2. The germs and ova are made directly from the germ 
plasm (ovaries and testes) of the parents, not from their bodies 
in general. Just as the bone marrow makes blood, or the cells 
of the neural tube the nervous system, so the germ plasm makes 
the germs and ova. 

3. The cells which are specialized to form the germ plasm 
— tliat is, to do the work of producing the next generation — 

*It will be observed that antenatal influences from the mother are ex- 
cluded from the discussion. A mother may, for instance, acquire diseases 
and transmit them through the blood, but transmit them by infecting the 
growing child, not by altering the quality of its original nature. 

tFor an admirable summary of the facts, see J. A. Thomson's Heredity, 
pp. 164-249. 



232 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

are set off and begin their more or less separate careers long- 
before the individual is born. 

4. The line of inheritance is thus from germs to germ 
plasm to germs to germ plasm and so on, 

5. The g^erm plasm is connected with, and related to, other 
structures in the body, including those of the central nervous 
system, in no more intimate way than are the other structures 
amongst themselves. The nervous system influences the grow- 
ing germ or ovum as it may influence the cells of the liver or 
heart or skin. 

6. No known mechanism exists by which such alterations 
of the brain's structure or of the quality of the brain's tissues 
as would correspond to changes in intellect and character, 
might produce in the germs changes fitted themselves to be- 
come, in the adult form, similar structures or equalities to those 
which caused them.''' 

7. The acquisition of specific mental traits by an individual 
seems thus unlikely to modify his germs so as to reproduce the 
specific trait acquired. With very general traits (such as 
mental vigor or weakness, health or degeneracy) the case might 
well be different. Such general mental traits might be corre- 
lated with bodily conditions which would include the germ 
plasm as well as any other parts of the body. The correlation, 
however, is by no means perfect. As to precise measures of 
how far acquired conditions of general health involve changes 
in the germ plasm and of how far such changes influence mental 
qualities in the offspring, there are none. 

The obvious way to settle the question is not by contemp- 
lating these inferences from present knowledge of the process 
of development, but rather by making the crucial experiment 

*It should, however, be said that Professor Jacques Loeb has suggested 
(Monist, Vol. VII., pp. 481-49.3) that in some cases of instinctive mental 
traits the organic basis may be the presence of some chemical substance, 
and that in these cases the change during life in the nature or amount 
of such substance might directly affect the germs so as to perpetuate 
the acquisition; This possibility is, so far as human mental traits are 
concerned, a matter of speculation. 



THE SOURCE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 233 

of letting animals acquire some mental traits and observing the 
nature of the offspring. No such experiments of a decisive 
nature have been made. If, for generation after generation, 
mice were offered palatable food always in the shape of yellow 
cubes smelling of grease and unpalatable food always in the 
shape of white balls smelling of cheese, were kept in a cage so 
arranged that on going into a certain alley they always received 
an electric shock, and were otherwise given a chance to learn 
certain habits, an observer could measure, for generation after 
generation, the quickness of formation of these habits and 
detect the slightest improvement. Even so few as ten or 
twenty generations would thus give a probable answer to this 
fundamental question. 

The popular idea of evidence on the question is as follows : 
"A studied mathematics and became a .great mathematician. 
So was his son. His father's studies must have helped to make 
him so." The retort is of course easy : "Why was the father 
a great mathematician ? Because of his original nature. Why 
was the son? Because his father's original nature made him 
so." We shall never get on with this question by begging it. 
The mere fact of family similarity never need imply the inherit- 
ance of parental acquisitions. 

A more advanced type of argument adduces the growth of 
some mental trait in the species as a whole. For instance it is 
said : "How can the growth of language be explained save by 
supposing that the constant exercise of the mind in this respect 
has resulted in ever-increasing facility in offspring until the 
few shouts and mutterings and wails of primitive man have 
become the complicated speech of today." 

The retort is as easy as before: "Language has grown be- 
cause on the whole those with the most inborn capacity for it 
lived and begot their like while those with the least inborn 
capacity died and left few or no heirs to their linguistic 
poverty." Not the inheritance of acquisitions, but the selection 
of those who could acquire ! 

The field of animal instincts has been well canvassed by 



234 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

biologists in search of light upon the general question. The 
gist of their discoveries is : ( i ) that many instincts are cer- 
tainly not the result of a summation of acquisitions, e. g., those 
that appear only once in a lifetime. (2) Most instincts are 
generalized rather than specific, though most acquired habits 
are specific rather than generalized. But a specific habit in- 
herited should give a specific instinct. Thus instead of a num- 
ber of fears of special enemies such as cats, hav/ks, skunks, etc., 
chicks have a general alarm at strange and impressive objects. 
(3) Useless instincts are very slow in being lost unless selection 
is at work.* Thus chicks swim, though not one in a thousand 
of their ancestors has done so for thousands of years. 

It is remarkable that certain evidence from human psychol- 
ogy has failed to receive attention in all these long debates. 
Human life offers a favored case for transmission of an acquired 
trait where transmission has clearly failed. The congenitally 
blind from eye defects do not have visual images of the sun, 
stars or any other of the permanent objects of the natural world, 
yet their ancestors for at least hundreds of generations, save in 
the cases of those lacking in visual images, had such images 
again and again. If the hourly experiences of hundreds of 
ancestral generations do not become a part of inborn equip- 
ment, we could hardly expect anything to do so. 

The burden of evidence is thus against the transmission of 
acquired mental traits. t The strengthening of a connection 

*If acquisitions became inherited of course unused habits would tend 
to disappear, would, we might say, be disinherited. 

tThe reasons for denying the power of a change in the body of a 
parent due to training so to influence the germ cells that the bodies 
developing therefrom will possess the change apart from training, are 
especially strong in the case of specific intellectual and moral tendencies. 
Yet two of the leaders in modern psychology, Wundt and Stanley Hall, 
assume that the acquired behavior of one generation does tend to become 
the original behavior of the generations to come. The former says, for 
example: "We have supposed that father can transmit to son the 
physiological dispositions that he has acquired by practice during his own 
life, and that in the course of generations, these inherited dispositions 
are strengthened and definitized by summation" ['92, Eng. transl. of '94, 



THE SOURCE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 235 

between a situation and a response by an individual seems 
unlikely to modify his germs so as to reproduce, in the children 
developing therefrom, a stronger bond between that situation 
and that response than they would otherwise have possessed. 
Similarly for the transmission of an abolition or weakening of 
a connection. Adequate experiments may conceivably reverse 
some of the conclusions based on existing evidence, but for the 
present we must deny the mental acquisitions of one generation 
any considerable share in the original natures of the next. 
Original nature springs from original nature. Its improve- 
ment depends on the elimination of the worse, not on their 
reformation. It depends on nothing else, imless there be an 
inherent tendency in human germs to vary in a definite direc- 
tion, and that a good one. We educate the original nature of 
the race only by fostering its good elements and encouraging 
their fertility, and by debarring the worse elements from repro- 
duction or by eliminating them outright. 

THE SELECTION OF '^CHANCE" VARIATIONS IN THE GERM PLASM 

The important questions concerning the origin of any 
instinct or capacity are, as was noted : first, 'What fact in the 
germs produces it ?' and second, 'What fact in nature produced 
this fact in the germ?' The doctrine that instincts and capa- 
cities spring, not from parental learning, but from chance 
germinal variations, has the merit of calling attention to the 
first question, but does not answer it. The second question it 

p. 408], and "The assumption of the inheritance of acquired dispositions 
or tendencies is inevitable. [Ibid., p. 405.] The latter does not attempt 
to explain, or even notice, the difficulties, but takes it for granted that 
"simian life seems to have almost created the human hand" ['04, vol. i, 
p. 155] and that "we inherit the stored results of" the experience of the 
animals in our ancestral line. ['04, vol. 2, p. 64] His real interest is 
in being able to assume that the original nature of man summarizes and 
is due to all the life of his ancestors, not in how it is due to that life. 
Neither Wundt or Hall gives any theory of how, or any evidence that, the 
learning of the past so changes the germs as to become the unlearned 
tendency of the present. 



236 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

merely restates after asserting that the answer proposed by the 
doctrine of the hereditary transmission of learning is false. 

It also, perhaps, unfairly emphasizes the difficulty of ascer- 
taining what the subtle forces are that do produce the varia- 
tions in the germ which in time account for the appearance, in 
the individual, of unlearned tendencies in thought, feeling and 
action. 

These are as yet hidden in the chemistry of protoplasm ; but 
they are no more 'random' or 'accidental' in the strict sense 
than are the forces whereby hydrogen and oxygen form water 
or the earth pursues its yearly course around the sun. Nor do 
believers in the origin of instincts by the selection of accidental 
variations really think that they are. 

The words 'accidental' and 'chance' indeed, in recent selec- 
tionist writings, mean little more than that the germinal varia- 
tions producing trait A as an unlearned tendency of the off- 
spring are not due in any special way to the parental acquisi- 
tion of trait A as a result of experience. The germinal varia- 
tions are, the selectionist would readily admit, caused by the 
environment, including the behavior of the adult body in whose 
germ plasm the variations are found, and caused in ways that, 
if we knew them, would be as regular and understandable as 
any natural causes. 

- The word 'accidental' has, however, emphasized the mystery 
of causation unduly. We did not say that the origin of 
the solar system, or of indigo, or of the contour of the Alps, 
was due to the selection of accidental variations. Had men 
done so, their zeal in the search for these origins would prob- 
ably have been less. 

Moreover, the words 'accidental' and 'chance' have left the 
impression that each original tendency which we separate off 
m name or otherwise isolate, originated by itself — that we have 
thousands of independent and enormously unlikely variations 
to be originated — that amongst dogs that did not 'point' at all 
one happened to be born that did ; that, amongst birds that laid 
their eggs and departed, one happened to be born with the 



THE SOURCE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 237 

extraordinary idiosyncrasy of keeping them warm till they 
hatched; that amongst birds that paid no attention to their 
mother when they were babies and no attention to their children 
when they were mothers, there happened to be born a bird with 
the one complex peculiarity out of millions of possible ones of 
letting its mother feed it and of feeding its own babies. The 
task of 'chance' was thus staggering to the imagination. One 
had to remain stupefied by the vague hopes of the 'millions of 
years of geologic time' and the 'billions of experiments which 
nature makes every year,' and the 'enormously greater varia- 
bility of germs when the world was young.' 

If one tried honestly to figure the probability that the atoms 
in a fertilized ovum would be thrown into such a condition as 
to produce such a new variation as incubation out of nothing, 
he felt like demanding millions of millions of years and bil- 
lions of billions of experiments ! We need not try. Original 
tendencies to behavior are not produced, each independently 
out of a mere seething of atoms. Each is, as a rule, fathered 
by some other instinct from which it comes as an easily con- 
ceivable 'chance.' The first variations in the animal kingdom 
give the basis for the next ; old variations, by combining in new 
ways and new proportions or by minor alterations in intensity 
alone^ account for many new ones. 

Just as the four-chambered heart of mammals came as a 
chance, not from chaos, but from a three-chambered heart, so 
the original fears, loves and fighting-tactics of man lead back 
to aversions, attractions and warfare existing long before man. 
Behavior, as well as gross bodily structure, has its genealogical 
tree — its natural history. The origin of variations is directed 
in both cases hy the variations that have already occurred. 
The task of the environment in producing, in the germ cells of 
multicellular animals, changes such as have produced all the 
changes in original tendencies to behavior from, say, the flat- 
worms to man, is still great enough — but it is a million-fold 
less than it seems to one who thinks of each Instinct of each 
species as a thing by itself. The worst difficulty of the origin 



238 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

of instincts by the direct action of the environment upon the 
germs v/as an imaginary difficulty. 

THE CONTINUITY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 

To illustrate the continuity of instincts and their origin by 
combinations of previous tendencies or by modifications thereof 
in a single particular, I quote the admirable account of incuba- 
tion given by the late Professor C. O. Whitman. 

I. Meaning to be Sought in Pkyletic Roots. — It seems 
quite natural to think of incubation merely as a means of pro- 
viding the heat needed for the development of the egg, and to 
assume that tlie need was felt before the means was found to 
meet it. Birds and eggs are thus presupposed, and as the 
birds could not have foreseen the need, they could not have hit 
upon the means except by accident. Then, what an infinite 
amount of chancing must have followed before the first "cud- 
dling" became a habit, and the habit a perfect instinct ! We 
are driven to such preposterous extremities as the result of tak- 
ing a purely casual feature to start with. Incubation supplies 
the needed heat, but that is an incidental utility that has nothing 
to do with the nature and origin of the instinct. It enables us 
to see how natural selection has added some minor adjustments, 
but explains nothing m.ore. For the real meaning of the in- 
stinct we must look to its phyletic roots. 

If we go back to animals standing near the remote ancestors 
of birds, to the amphibia and fishes, we find the same instinct 
stripped of its later disguises. Here one or both parents simply 
remain over or near the eggs and keep a watchful guard against 
enemies. Sometimes the movements of the parent serve to 
keep the eggs supplied with fresh water, but aeration is not the 
purpose for which the instinct exists. 

2. Means Rest and Incidental Protection to Offspring. — 
The instinct is a part of the reproductive cycle of activities, and 
always holds the same relation in all forms that exhibit it, 
whether high or low. It follows the production of eggs, or 
young, and means primarily, as I believe, rest with incidental 
protection to offspring. That meaning is always manifest, no 
less in worms, mollusc?, Crustacea, spiders and insects, than in 
fishes, amphibia, reptiles and birds. The instinct makes no 



THE SOURCE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 239 

distinction between eggs and young, and that is true all along 
the line up to birds which extend the same blind instinct to one 
as to the other. 

3. Essential Elements of the Instinct. — Every essential 
element in the instinct of incubation was present long before 
the birds and eggs arrived. These elements are : ( i ) the dis- 
position to remain with or over the eggs; (2) the disposition 
to resist and drive away enem.ies; and (3) periodicity. The 
birds brought all these elements along in their congenital equip- 
ment, and added a few minor adaptations, such as cutting the 
period of incubation to the need of normal development, and 
thus avoiding indefinite waste of time in case of sterile or 
abortive eggs. 

(i) Disposition to Remain over the Eggs. — ^The disposi- 
tion to remain over the eggs is certainly very old, and is prob- 
ably bound up with the physiological necessity for rest after a 
series of activities tending to exhaust the whole S3^stem. If 
this suggestion seems far-fetched, when thinking of birds, it 
will seem less so as we go back to simpler conditions, as we 
find them among some of the lower invertebrate forms, which 
are relatively very inactive and predisposed to remain quiet 
until impelled by hunger to move. Here we find animals re- 
maining over their eggs, and thus shielding them from harm, 
from sheer inability or indisposition to move. That is the case 
with certain molluscs (Crcpidula) , the habits and development 
of which have been recently studied by Professor Conklin. 
Here full protection to offspring is afforded w^ithout any exer- 
tion on the part of the parent, in a strictly passive way that 
excludes even any instinctive care. In Clcpsine there is a man- 
ifest unwillingness to leave the eggs, showing that the disposi- 
tion to remain over them is instinctive. If we start with forms 
of similar sedentary mode of life, it is easy to see that remaining 
over the eggs would be the most likely thing to happen, even 
if no instinctive regard for them existed. The protection 
afforded would, however, be quite sufficient to insure the 
development of the instinct, natural selection favoring those 
individuals vv^hich kept their position unchanged long enough 
for the eggs to hatch." ['99, pp. 322 ff.] 

The proper continuation of this topic would be a series of 
genealogies or evolutions of other different features of man's 
original nature. But the natural history of the development 



240 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

of any one of these, from its condition in the early generalized 
primate whence man sprang to its condition in man today, is 
as yet unknown. 

Marshall gives (in his Instinct and Reason ['98], especially 
in chapters IV to VIII) an acute and interesting speculative 
general genealogy of instincts, showing how, in his opinion, 
the instincts concerned in the life of the individual grew into 
more complete forms as organisms consisting of larger and 
more variegated aggregates of cells developed, how the instincts 
of the life of sex and the family could grow from these by 
variation, complication and addition, how the instincts con- 
cerned in the life of larger social groups should come later, and 
how a final instinct to regulate and harmonize all these ap- 
peared in the shape of man's tendency to be religious. Many 
other writers have, in the case of one or other feature of 
human nature, suggested possible origins, but these too, though 
often interesting, are speculative. Indeed, we do not know 
what was the physical form of the early primate whence man 
sprang, much less what were his original tendencies to 
thought, feeling and conduct, and least of all how these grew 
into the human activities of our list. 

To recognize the fact of our ignorance is itself instructive. 
So I illustrate it in the case of the question of how far man's 
original nature has advanced intellectually and morally in the 
course of the last ten thousand generations. 

THE EXTENT OF SELECTION FOR INTELLECTUAL AND 
MORAL SUPERIORITY 

The reader who has absorbed without criticism, as truisms 
of evolution, a multitude of doctrines to the effect that from 
primitive man a quarter or half million years ago to man today 
there has been a wonderful increase in the intellectual capacities 
and moral instincts, will be shocked to hear that it is well within 
the bounds of belief that man's original nature is little or no 
better adapted to the conquest of nature or to peace and good 



THE SOURCE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 24I 

will amongst men now than then. That it is within the bounds 
of belief is proved by the simple fact that competent thinkers 
believe it. In the most recent and most searching survey of 
racial progress, Boas expresses gravest doubt concerning the 
supposed gains in original intellect and morality of modern 
over primitive man. He says in summary : 

"Before we entered into the comparison of the mental life 
of primitive man and of civilized man, we had to clear away 
a number of misconceptions caused by the current descriptions 
of the life of primitive man. We saw that the oft-repeated 
claim that he has no power to inhibit impulses, no power of 
attention, no originality of thought, no power of reasoning, 
could not be maintained ; and that all these faculties are com- 
mon to primitive man and to civilized man. . . . This led us 
to a brief consideration of the question wliether the hereditary 
mental faculty was improved by civilization, an opinion that 
did not seem plausible to us." ['ii, p. 247.] 

It is a question of the origin of inheritable variations and 
of their selection. What inheritable variations toward greater 
intellectual capacities, readier kindliness, and the like there 
have been since paleolithic man, no one knows. Nor do we 
know so much as we are tempted to think we do about the 
selection that has taken place amongst the varieties of human 
nature then existing or since evolved. It is easy to build up 
plausible hypotheses about who have been killed off but almost 
as easy to undermine them. 

As a sample of such hypotheses we may examine the fol- 
lowing from Sutherland, who is one of the most candid and 
definite and concrete of the moralists who see a cause of man's 
present decency, and a promise of general justice and affection 
for the future, in the improvement of man's original nature by 
the elimination of the cruel, stupid and perverse individuals of 
the species. 

"It may seem fantastic to assert that within historic times 
actual physiological differences of nerve structure can have been 
developed in the race. Yet it is a sober fact, though demon- 
strable as yet by only indirect proofs. For we have seen that 
16 



242 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

the man who is a good father, a good husband and a good 
citizen is the ancestor of many progeny, while the Napoleonic 
type of abundant brains but deficient sympathies, even though 
it makes a brilliant career, perishes in a century or less from 
off the face of the earth. Let us form some idea of the rate 
at which this process may go forward. Each person now liv- 
ing had two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grand- 
parents, and so on; thus ten generations back his ancestors 
formed a living regiment of 1024 persons. If there has been 
any intermarrying of relatives in the interval the number, of 
course, must be reduced. Make a small allowance, and assume 
that on an average each Englishman of the present day had 
1000 ancestors of the tenth degree all living in the time of 
Queen Elizabeth. Or rather let us assume that there were 
then born 500 boys and 500 girls who might have been the 
ancestors of the now living individual, but that a portion of 
these were weeded out ; some of them dying through want of 
sufficient parental care; others as they grew up dying through 
their own failure of sympathetic quality. One might have 
turned out a murderer and been hanged, another a robber and 
been shipped to the plantations. One might have been killed 
by his own youthful immoralities, another refused a wife 
because of his disorderly life. In short, it is no exaggeration 
to say that out of 1000 possible ancestors, fifty would, on an 
average, be eliminated through the failure of parental, conjugal 
or social qualities. Indeed, in Elizabeth's time, out of every 
1000 persons born five were actually hanged, as a matter of 
recorded statistics. But brawls, venereal diseases, and so forth 
were far more potent cleansers of society. Those thus elim- 
inated would be replaced by men and women of better stock, 
and so we may feel sure that at each generation a steady 5 per 
cent, of the poorer type was withdrawn, leaving room for the 
expansion of those richer in sympathetic qualities. But the 
power of such a steady withdrawal, acting in cumulative 
fashion, is enormous when spread over a sufficient time; even 
300 years are quite enough to produce visible effects; indeed, if 
we had a means of sifting the people of Queen Elizabeth's time 
into two equal sets, those who could pass in those days for 
fairly good men and women, and those who were more or less 
distinctly below the average of moral conduct, it would be 
found that practically none of the inferior blood flows in the 



THE SOURCE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 243 

veins of the present generation; we being- bred almost wholly 
from the better stock. 

All this implies that nerve organisms of finer susceptibilities 
survive, and it follows, therefore, that we are of distinctly dif- 
ferent nerve reactions from those ancestors of ours who, 1500 
years ago, regarded the Leges Barbarorum as suitable codes of 
justice. And the change becomes very rapid in such a land as 
the England of the last three centuries, with its internal develop- 
ment so little troubled by war, and its external conflicts serving 
only as a vent for restless spirits away from home. Within 
the community the preservative value of courage and strength 
has been declining while that of intelligence and sympathy has 
been ever on the increase. In no other way can we account 
for that enormous acceleration in the growth of sympathy 
during these later times, so abundantly shown in the chapters 
which have, or were to have, preceded." ['98, vol. 2, p. 5 f.] 

The difficulty with such arguments is, of course, the abun- 
dance of apparently contrary cases. Were the brutal husbands 
hanged, or did they drive their long-suffering wives to early 
graves? Were the cut-throats and brawlers or the reformers 
and idealists debarred, by death, disgrace or imprisonment, from 
having offspring? Many patient researches must be made be- 
fore anybody can be sure of the relation of selection for sur- 
vival and reproduction to any of the important original 
tendencies in man, for even ten generations back. What it has 
been on the whole during the ten thousand or more generations 
of men since man worked flints, v/e may never know. Even if 
man's original nature had steadily deteriorated, the gains from 
training — from the circumstances in which, and the tools with 
which, man lives and works — would probably have always 
masked the fact to ordinary observation. No one can doubt 
that by far the greater part of human advance is due to changed 
conditions rather than changed natures. Perhaps it all is. 

Such are the perplexities of one who tries to account for 
man's present status in sympathy, curiosity, abstract reasoning 
and the like. A generation ago, men of science began to sus- 
pect that each generation's habits did not directly transfer 
themselves into an instinctive fund. A decade ago, they began 



244 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

to supplement the vague general fact of germinal variation and 
selection through survival, by experimental studies of the actual 
units of variation, the mechanism of inheritance and the nature 
and extent of selection by survival. It is to be hoped that, a 
decade hence, some psychologist will have shown by such 
scientific genealogies as the biologists are now developing, what 
sorts of inheritable mental variations are being originated and 
what varieties of mankind have been, and are being, selected 
for survival and the production of offspring. The source of 
man's original nature in the future should be, within the limita- 
tions set by ultimate biological laws, in the power of man him- 
self. In proportion as he realizes that no question is more 
important for him than the question of who is being born, he 
can learn to give the original nature of future men a higher, 
purer source than the muddy stream of the past. 



chapter xvi 

The Order and Dates of Appearance and 
Disappearance of Original Tendencies 

Different original tendencies appear at different dates after 
the fertilization of the ovum — ^the beginning of a new individ- 
ual life. Some are dela)^ed only until birth ; some, till long 
after birth. The order of appearance and the length of the 
intervals from the start of life to the appearance of each tend- 
ency are not random. Typical conditions exist for man as a 
species, with, of course, very wide variations. For this typical 
order and these typical intervals there must be a reason. 

Original tendencies also may persist for different lengths 
of time after their first appearance. The influence of the 
discomfort produced by them is often the only explanation 
needed for this transitoriness and its degree. But in some 
cases the original tendency seems to be inherently transitory, 
to disappear from the organism's repertory even though its 
exercise produces no discomfort to the individual. For these 
wanings and their dates also there must be a reason. 

Two theories have been suggested to account for the order 
and the dates of appearance and disappearance of original 
tendencies. The first is the Recapitulation Theory. The 
second is the Utility Theory. 

THE recapitulation THEORY 

The Recapitulation Theory in its clearest form is that the 
order of appearance of original tendencies in the individual 
is more or less exactly that in which they have appeared in 
the race — that is, in the entire ancestry of the individual, — and 
that the intervals from the fertilization of the ovum to the 

245 



246 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

dates of appearance of the individual's original tendencies 
bear more or less exactly the same proportions one to another 
that the intervals from the beginning of life in the animal 
kingdom to the dates of appearance of the same tendencies 
in the race bear one to another. The order and dates of dis- 
appearance in the individual parallel in a similar manner the 
corresponding facts in man's ancestry. The reason assigned 
for this parallelism between an individual and his entire ances- 
try in the order and dates of appearance and disappearance 
of original tendencies by the recapitulation theory is the sup- 
posed bionomic law. This is a law of the germ's development 
whereby any change made in it is made with an additional 
mechanism that sets the date of the change's effect on the indi- 
vidual developing from that germ later than the dates of the 
effects of changes made hitherto in the germ. Suppose, for 
example, that for a thousand centuries from the origin of life, 
man's ancestors floated aimlessly, then for a thousand swam 
by cilia, then for a thousand wriggled like snakes, then for a 
thousand walked on four feet, then for a thousand both walked, 
climbed and swung as do the monkeys. Let us suppose fur- 
ther that each new tendency was accompanied by the loss of 
the old one. Then, by this extreme form of the recapitulation 
theory, the human individual should, beginning at the start 
of his individual life, possess these tendencies in that same 
order, retain each for an equal time, and lose them one after 
another (except of course the last, whose loss would depend 
upon whether the individual's ancestry had lost it). 

A more general illustration in graphic form will help to 
fix this extreme form of the Recapitulation Theory in memory. 
Suppose tendencies A, B, C, D, etc., to have appeared in man's 
ancestry at the times shown by the upper ends of the lines at 
the left hand of Fig. 22 and to have been lost at the times 
shown by the lower ends of these lines. Then tendencies A, 
B, C, D, etc., will appear in man's life and, apart from outside 
influence, will disappear therefrom, as shown by the lines at 
the right of Fig. 22. 



ORDER AND DATES 



247 



TIME LINE FOR 

THE PACE 
YEARS 



3i)00.000 



&000.000 



9.000.000 



liOOO.00.0 



ISOOO.OOO 



I6D0QOOO 



21.000.000 



24000.000 



t7.000.000 



31.000.000 



TIME LINE FOR 

THE INDIVIDUAL 

YEARS 

A 



BIRTH 

2 

4 

6 

8 

10 

12 

14 

16 

- 18 
20 

- 22 

- 24 



Fig. 22. 



This clear extreme form of the recapitulation theory is 
probably held by no student of human nature; for, obviously, 
the time during which the early ancestral tendencies are pos- 
sessed by the individual is, if not zero, at least a far smaller 
fraction of the time during which the late ancestral tendencies 
are possessed by him than is the case with the times in the 
case of the race. So the parallelism of individual and race 
is universally amended by supposing the early racial tendencies 



248 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



to be in the individual abbreviated in some rough proportion 
to their earliness. 

Instead of Fig. 22, then, we would have something like 
Fig. 23, wherein A's stay in the individual is one-tenth as long 
a fraction of the period from conception to the adult condition, 
as A's stay in the individual is of the period from the protozoa 
to modern man ; B's stay is two-tenths ; C's is four-tenths 
and D's is seven-tenths. 

To make sure that the reader gets a just idea of what the 



Time UNE FOR 

THE RACE 



3.000.000 



6.000.000 



9.000.000 



(2.000000 



15.000.000 



18.000.000 



21.000.000 



24,000.000 



27.000.000 



31.000.000 



TIME LINE FOR 
THE INDIVIDUAL 


Al • 


Q 




BIRTH 




2 




4 




6 




8 




10 




12 




14 




16 




18 




20 




22 




24 



Fig. 23. 



ORDER AND DATES 249 

recapitulation-theory means to its adherents and of how they 
use it in explaining human nature, I quote at some length 
from their most instructive statements about it. The following 
are samples of the more general statements: 

"The course of mental development is exactly determined 
through the relation of ontogenesis (individual development) 
to phylogenesis (the development of the race). The develop- 
ment of the higher (purposive and rational) activities is regu- 
lated in every respect in accord with the previously developed 
instincts, and is primarily conditioned by them. No influence 
that works in opposition to this development and to the law 
of inheritance of racial traits in order can ever reach a suitable 
adaptation, but only disturbs the natural course of development, 
and creates abnormal misdirected endeavor." [Schneider, '82, 

p. 489] 

"The individual, from conception to senescence, follows 
the order of development of the race." [Burk, F. L., '98, 
P- 36] 

"As in the physical world, so in the psychical there is a 
natural order of growth. Since it is the order of nature that 
the new organism should pass through certain developmental 
stages, it behooves us to study nature's plan and seek rather 
to aid than to thwart it. For nature must be right; there is 
no higher criterion. There is, therefore, no study of more 
vital importance to the educationist than this of the natural 
development of organisms. The parallelism of phylogeny and 
ontogeny enforces the argument in favor of natural develop- 
ment and the doctrine of katharsis or vaccination as applied 
to the moral growth of the child. It furnishes a double sup- 
port to the view that education should be a process of orderly 
and gradual unfolding, without precocity and without inter- 
ference, from lower to ever higher stages ; that forcing is un- 
natural and that the mental pabulum should be suited to the 
stage of development reached. So long as we keep the end in 
view and do not cause the child to linger in any of the stages, 
we need not fear the discipline that each stage is calculated to 
give as a preparation for the next. For what Von Baer long 
ago said of animals is true also of the child : 'The type of 
each animal appears to fix itself at the very beginning in the 
embryo and to dominate the whole development.' 

"The period of animal recapitulation is short. In this 



250 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

work the attempt has not been made to deal with the recapitu- 
lation of human stages of development, but reasoning from the 
fact that the length of time taken to recapitulate a period does 
not depend upon the duration of that period phylogenetically, 
but upon its recency, we may conclude that the recapitulation 
of human stages of development is much longer than that of 
the longest animal stage, viz., the ape stage." [Guillet, '00, 
pp. 427-428] 

"Holding that the child and the race are each keys to the 
other, I have constantly suggested phyletic explanations . . " 
[Hall, G. S., '04, vol. I, p. viii] 

. , . "the child ontogenetically recapitulating the phylo- 
genetic development of the race, craves instinctively for com- 
munion with nature." [Bolton, F. E., '99, p. 227] 

. . . "ontogenetic development is recapitulatory. Each in- 
dividual passes through the stages through which its phylum 
has passed." [Dawson, G. E., '00, p. 189] 

. . . "the child's development is only a condensed index 
of what took place on the larger plane of race history." 
[Slaughter, J. W., '02, p. 294] 

The following, all from Stanley Hall, are samples of the 
theory as it works in use : 

"Our animal ancestors were not birds, and we cannot 
inherit sensations of flying; but they floated and swam far 
longer than they have had legs, had a radically different mode 
of breathing, and why may there not be .vestigial traces of 
this in the soul, as there are gill-slits imder the skin of our 
necks; and why may not the former come to as great prom- 
inence in exceptional stages and persons as the latter do in 
some monstrous births? To deny it is to make the soul more 
limited in its backward range than is the body. For one, I 
am too realistic and cannot think so meanly of the soul as to 
do this. Although it cannot be demonstrated like rudimen- 
tary organs, I feel strongly that we have before us here some 
of the oldest elements of psychic life, some faint reminiscent 
atavistic echo from the primeval sea." ['97, p. 158] 

"These non-volitional movements of earliest infancy and 
of later childhood (such as 'licking things, clicking with the 
tongue, g-rinding the teeth, biting the nails, shrugging cor- 
rugations, pulling buttons or twisting garments, strings, etc., 



ORDER AND DATES 2$ I 

twirling pencils,' etc. etc.) . . . are relics of past forms of 
utilities now essentially obsolete. Ancient modes of loco- 
motion, prehension, balancing, defense, attack, sensuality, etc., 
are all rehearsed, some quite fully and some only by the faintest 
mimetic suggestion, flitting spasmodic tensions, gestures, or 
facial expressions." ['04, Vol. i, p. 160] 

*'The best index and guide to the stated activities of adults 
in past ages is found in the instinctive, untaught, and non- 
imitative plays of children. ... In play every mood and 
movement is instinct with heredity. Thus we rehearse the 
activities of our ancestors, back we know not how far, and 
repeat their life work in summative and adumbrated ways. It 
is reminiscent, albeit unconsciously, of our line of descent, and 
each is the key to the other. . . . Thus stage by stage we 
enact their (our ancestors') lives. Once in the phylon many 
of these activities were elaborated in the life and death strug- 
gle for existence. Now the elements and combinations oldest 
in the muscle history of the race are re-presented earliest 
in the individual, and those later follow in order." ['04, Vol. 
I, pp. 202-203] 

"Very interesting scientifically and suggestive practically 
is another correspondence , . . between the mode of spon- 
taneous activity in youth and that of labor in the early his- 
tory of the race . . . during this early time great exertion, 
sometimes to the point of utter exhaustion and collapse, alter- 
nated with seasons of almost vegetative existence. We see 
abundant traces of this psychosis in the muscle-habits of adoles- 
cents." ['04, Vol. I, p. 215 f.] 

"Normal adolescent boys especially wish to explore night 
out-of-doors, to rove about perhaps with adventurous or roman- 
tic thoughts, and on moonlight nights particularly there is a 
pathos about the necessity of rest. A part of this suggests 
an atavistic recrudescence of what may have been in primitive 
man the need of watchfulness, the custom of predatory adven- 
tures by night, still reverberating in the attenuated form of 
periods of nocturnal restlessness." ['04, Vol. i, p. 264] 

"As in the pre-natal and infant stage man hears from his 
remoter forebears back perhaps to primitive organisms, now 
(at adolescence) the later and higher ancestry takes up the 
burden of the song of life, and the voices of our extinct and 
perhaps forgotten, and our later and more human ancestry, 
are heard in the soul." ['04, Vol. 2, p. 70 f.] 



252 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

. . . "the interesting- phenomenon of 'candle-light fever.' 
Children wake up as to a new morn in petto, are wild, noisy, 
frolicsome, and abandoned. This, I suggest, may be the rever- 
beration in modern souls of the joy that in some prehistoric 
times hailed the Prometheus art of controlling fire and defy- 
ing night." ['04, Vol. 2, p. 173] 

"The years from about eight to twelve constitute an unique 
period of human life. The acute stage of teething is passing, 
the brain has acquired nearly its adult size and weight, health 
is almost at its best, activity is greater and more varied 
than ever before or than it ever will be again, and there is 
peculiar endurance, vitality, and resistance to fatigue. The 
child develops a life of its own outside the home circle, and 
its natural interests are never so independent of adult influence. 
Perception is very acute, and there is great immunity to ex- 
posure, danger, accident, as well as to temptation. Reason, 
true morality, religion, sympathy, love, and esthetic enjoy- 
ment are but very slightly developed. Everything, in short, 
suggests the culmination of one stage of life as if it thus repre- 
sented what was once and for a very protracted and relatively 
stationary period, the age of maturity in some remote, per- 
haps pigmoid stage of human evolution, when in a warm cli- 
mate the young of our species once shifted for themselves inde- 
pendently of further parental aid." ['04, Vol. i, pp. ix and x] 

"Adolescence is a new birth, for the hig-her and more com- 
pletely human traits are now born. . . . The child comes 
from and harks back to a remote past. ['04, Vol. i, p. xiii]* 

THE UTILITY THEORY 

The Utility Theory explains the dates of original tend- 
encies by the same causes as account for their existence — 
variation and selection. Other things being equal, the date 
at which a tendency appears is that one of the many varying 
dates at which it has appeared in our ancestry which has been 
most serviceable in keeping the stock alive. Thus suckling, 

* x\bundant further illustrations may be found in Stanley Hall's 
Adolescence — e.g., in vol. i, on pages 160, 206, 216, 223, 264, 353, 356, 358, 
361, 366; and, in vol. 2, on pages 181 f., 192, 194 f., 212 f., 215, 216, 217, 
219, 365- 



ORDER AND DATES 253 

though late in the race, is early in the individual. The sex 
instincts, though early in the race, are very late in the individ- 
ual. Walking on all fours, though the possession of the race 
for perhaps millions of years, is evanescent or non-existent as 
a human instinct ; creeping, though not a duplicate of any im- 
portant form of locomotion possessed and then lost in our 
ancestral line, is one of the most emphatic transitory tenden- 
cies of infancy. 

An advocate of the Utility Theory should not assert that 
the actual order is in every particular useful (that is, more 
useful that a chance order) ; much less that it is the most use- 
ful order for survival that there could be. An order of original 
tendencies has to be very injurious if the individual possessing 
it is to be very frequently eliminated. For a better order 
than whatever order exists to be selected for survival, it must 
first appear as a variation. That is, the theory that the order 
and dates of appearance and disappearance of original tend- 
encies are due to natural selection is subject to the same inter- 
pretation as the theory of natural selection elsewhere. 

I have not found instructive quotations representing the 
utility theory. It has been, perhaps, assumed by opponents 
of the recapitulation theory, but they have generally been sat- 
isfied to point out the latter's impossibilities, without advanc- 
ing a constructive doctrine. As held by the writer, the utility 
theory of the order of appearance and dates of the original 
tendencies in human intellect and character is that the same 
causes which account for the origin and perpetuation of a 
tendency account for its time relations to other tendencies. 
Whatever makes the tendency happen at all makes it happen at 
some date and place in the total order of the animal's develop- 
ment. Whatever makes it vary at all snakes it vary in its date. 
Other things being equal, the date which will be perpetuated 
will be that one of the many varying dates at zvhich it appears, 
which proves most serviceable in keeping the species alive. 
Similarly for its date of disappearance. What the time rela- 
tions of human original tendencies are, like what the tenden- 



254 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

cies themselves are, is thus the result of variation by whatever 
influences the gennplasni and selection by utility. 

THE EVIDENCE 

Advocates of the recapitulation theory rely upon the anal- 
ogy between the development of the mind and that of the 
body, and the assumption that in the latter the order of change 
from the fertilized ovum to the adult structure is the order of 
change in the race from the protozoa to ho7no sapiens. 'Since 
ontogeny repeats phylogeny in the growth of the body, it 
probably does in the growth of behavior,' is the one repeated 
argument. 

The facts are, however, that the only valid analogy would 
be between the development of the mind and that of the central 
nervous system, that the latter does not develop in man in any- 
thing at all closely like the way in which it has developed in 
the total ancestry of man, and that in the body as a whole 
the duplication of phylogeny by ontogeny is by no means a 
general law of growth. These three points will best be dis- 
cussed in the reverse order. 

The recapitulatory, or bio-genetic, or bionomic, law that 
'ontogeny repeats phylogeny' is true in only a very vague and 
partial way. Only in rough outlines and in the case of a frac- 
tion of bodily organs does nature make an individual from the 
fertilized ovum by the same series of changes by which it 
made his species from the primitive protozoa. No competent 
biologist would, for instance, dare to infer, from the series of 
stages through which the lungs, arms and legs, and cerebral 
hemispheres pass in individual development, what the exact 
origins of lungs, arms and fore-brain were in the race. The 
likenesses of a man at successive periods to the adult forms 
of a fish, reptile and early mammal are faint and questionable. 
No one would mistake the human embryo at any stage for 
any adult fish or reptile or mammal. No one can tell from 
ontogeny what the phylogeny of man has been in the great 



ORDER AND DATES 255 

changes from invertebrate to vertebrate, from early generalized 
mammal to primate, from early primate to man. The clearest 
cases of recapitulation are those where the way taken to pro- 
duce the structure is a likely way apart from any tendency 
to recapitulate for recapitulation's sake. Thus, for a four- 
chambered heart to be made by making one chamber, dividing 
it, and then dividing each of the halves ; for a backbone to be 
deposited in a mould of cartilage; for a multicellular animal to 
grow by cell division, or for the total structure of an animal to 
be first laid down in a series of segments, might be efficient 
ways irrespective of ancestry. We must not forget that the 
animal has to grow somehow. 

The facts of ontogeny and of phylogeny in the case of the 
central nervous system are notably discouraging to the expec- 
tation that the dates of original tendencies in intellect and 
character from birth to manhood can be prophesied from the 
history of the race. Man's brain in general follows in its 
growth a course enormously unlike that by which It developed 
in the race. His backbone and heart may at one stage be 
much like that of a reptile, but his brain is not. His head may 
show traces of gill slits, but his brain never develops the 
lateral-line system of the fishes. The fusion of tail vertebrae 
may be followed in his coccyx, but the fusion of segments in 
the brain is almost or quite untraceable. Moreover, by the 
time a baby is born, his brain has long, long outgrown any 
forms comparable to those of fish, amphibion, reptile or early 
mammal. So also in the number of its neurones. The 
growth of the neurones' connections has not been traced, but 
this seems least of all likely to repeat racial history. Oddly 
enough the chief variation of the brain's growth from that of 
the body as a whole is a most unlikely variation to come on 
the recapitulatory hypothesis : his brain is specially big for his 
body, the new-born being in this respect the super-man! 

Now for any valid expectation that a child should have 
at a certain age original tendencies to thought or action 
such as are characteristic of a fish or monkey or primitive 



256 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

V 

man, one should have reason to expect the parts of his brain con- 
cerned to be at that age Hke the corresponding- parts of the 
brain of the primitive man or the monkey or the fish. Such 
reasons are lacking. 

The argument from analogy with bodily development thus 
fails to justify the hypothesis that the order and dates of 
human original tendencies will correspond with their order of 
acquisition and length of maintenance in man's total ancestry. 
The question should be settled, not by overstraining an anal- 
ogy, but by actually comparing the individual and the racial 
course of development. 

Neither series is well enough known to allow more than 
occasional and inadequate comparisons; but what little is 
known is rather decidedly against any close parallelism of 
the two. For example, reaching for objects, holding them, 
putting them in the mouth, sitting up, standing erect, walking, 
climbing, hunting, migration, fighting and the sex instincts, 
whose dates of appearance in individual development are 
fairly well known, come in nothing like the order and at 
nothing like the dates of racial development. 

Even the cases suggested as examples of the parallelism 
by advocates of the theory often are strong evidence against 
it. For example, Stanley Hall states as possible parallels, 
in the individual, of the fish stage in the race, the following: 

"A babe a few days old . . . made peculiar paddling or 
swimming movements," 

"In children and adults ... we find swaying from side 
to side or forward or backward, not infrequent. This sug- 
gests the slow oscillatory movements used by fish." 

"Children . . . after the first shock and fright take the 
greatest delight in water." 

"Others older or less active can sit by the hour seeing and 
hearing the movement of water in sea or stream." ['04, vol. 
2, pp. 192-195, passim] 

The fish stage is thus paralleled all the way from four days 
to forty years, even if we doubt the existence in fishes of an}^- 



ORDER AND DATES 257 

thing- like the elderly contemplation of water by one sitting- on 
the bank. 

The life of the early primates according to Hall ['04, vol. 
2, p. 214 ff.] is recapitulated by the prehensile power of the 
new-born, the fear of thunder and lightning, the fear of ser- 
pents, the fear of high winds, the somnolence of infants when 
rocked, the fear of open places, the "untaught horror of water'* 
and the fact that man does not instinctively swim, the fear 
of falling, the clinging of infants to the parent, the love of 
climbing in boys, and the fact that 'man lias an instinctive 
pleasure to get up high and look down and afar, "imitative- 
ness, the facts that children instinctively and without teaching 
ascribe "emotion, sense, intelligence, morality, to trees" and 
that "dense forests soothe, hush, and awe the soul and feel 
'like church.' " 

Roughly the individual would seem to pass through the 
primate stage somewhat earlier than the fish stage, especially 
since we can confidently acquit our monkey ancestors of any 
tendency to ascribe "intelligence and morality to trees" or to 
feel "like church." But within a single page Hall has the 
childish interest in trees recapitulating, not the life of the 
primates, but that of the primitive man! The same author 
makes the early teens recapitulate "the darkest of all ages 
during which brute became man," the times of astrology and 
ancient myths of stars, and the times of "pastoral and agri- 
cultural life" as well as the times of the fishes and apes. The 
new-born baby not only "makes paddling and swimming move- 
ments" qua fish, but also has a "horror of water" qua monkey. 
Such defenses of the recapitulation theory are obviously more 
dangerous to it that the most violent attacks. 

Certain obvious exceptions — such as the very late appear- 
ance in the individual of the instincts of sex which arose very 
early in the race, or the very early appearance in the individual 
of babbling, laughing, weeping, grasping and putting in the 
mouth — have forced the adherents of the recapitulation theory 
to admit that, in the individual, the racial order is much dis- 
17 



258 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

torted, and that some of its elements are omitted altogether, 
or passed through so rapidly as to be hardly discernible. 
When it is admitted that such distortions and omissions 
are very frequent, little more is left of the theory than 
a useless general scheme for explaining facts whose existence 
has to be proved by direct observation entirely apart from the 
theory, or a body of dubious suggestions for investigation. 
A rule for the exceptions becomes more instructive than the 
rule itself. 

On the whole, the recapitulation theory in the case of 
mental traits seems to be an attractive speculation Viath no 
more truth beliind it than the fact that when a repetition of 
phylogeny, abbreviated and modified, is a useful way of pro- 
ducing an individual, he may be produced in that way. In 
intellectual capacities the child of two years has passed all the 
stages previous to man. It is difficult to find even one instinct 
in ten that occupies in his ontogeny the same relative position 
in time that it occupied in his phylogeny. No fact of value 
about either the ontogeny or phylogeny of behavior has, to 
my knowledge, been discovered as a result of this theory. 
Consequently one cannot help thinking that the influence which 
it has exerted upon students of human nature is due, not to 
rational claims, but to its rhetorical attractiveness. The gen- 
eral idea was entertained before the days of Von Baer and 
Darwin, and its educational parallel, the culture-epoch theory, 
has, despite absence of rational grounds, been exceedingly 
popular. 

The evidence for and against the utility theory may be 
summarized more briefly. If the clearest cases of delayed 
tendencies are examined, their dates of appearance do seem, 
within such limitations as hold of all functions, to be more 
useful to the species than much earlier dates would be. Thus, 
supposing in each case that the rest of man's organization 
remained as it is, a tendency to try to walk at six months, 
or to climb trees at two years, or to sex-indulgence at eight, 



ORDER AND DATES 259 

and the like, would probably be injurious. If clear cases of 
transitoriness are examined, their dates of disappearance seem 
also roughly more economical than much earlier or later dates 
would be. Thus, apart from civilization's aids, the species 
would probably sufifer if, while the rest of man's organization 
remained as it was, children lost the tendency to suckle at the 
age of six months or retained the tendency to cling to a 
familiar human animal till the age of sixty years. 

Divergences from the racial order and dates are very 
often in the direction of a more useful order. So sitting up 
baby-wise with legs outstretched in front comes in the early 
months of man's life (though very late, or not at all, in the 
race), preceding the full development of reaching, grasping 
and putting in the mouth. So walking erect precedes climb- 
ing trees. So there is a mutual adaptation of the dates of the 
baby's behavior and the mother's and father's at the age of 
zero for the former, and at fourteen or later in the latter, though 
presumably in the race these correlatives developed at the 
same time. 

On the whole, although too little is as yet known of the 
dates of appearance and disappearance of human original ten- 
dencies to verify any theory, natural selection of a certain 
date for a tendency seems to have the same claim that natural 
selection of the tendency itself has. 

THE DATES OF APPEARANCE OF PARTICULAR TENDENCIES 

Since an original tendency may appear only after a certain 
stage of growth is reached, may increase in strength or vary 
in nature as growth progresses and may, apart from all effects 
of experience, wane and disappear, such a tendency is ade- 
quately described only by describing its status at every stage 
of growth. The inventory of our earlier chapters, to be 
complete, would have to include the changes in each original 
tendency in relation to the animal's growth or total life- 
history. In a later volume I hope to remedy this incomplete- 



26o THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ness, but for the present, the assignment of each detailed 
tendency to a period in the individual's life and the estimate 
of its rate of rise (and of its fall, if it is transitory) will 
be left to the reader's own judgment or further studies. 

No very sharp details should be expected from such studies. 
The complex interaction of growth from within and training 
from without is so baffling that the studies that have been 
made of the time-relations of instincts are inconclusive even 
when the methods of getting and treating the facts have been 
sound. When, as has often been the case, the collection of 
data has been misguided and their treatment uncritical, the 
results are likely to be less accurate than a sagacious man's 
guess. Consequently, the literature in this field, though in 
many cases interesting as a concrete presentation of child 
life, does not enable one to separate the unlearned from the 
learned year by year. 

Two general questions concerning the time-relations of 
original tendencies may be discussed here because of their 
intrinsic importance and their service in predisposing the stu- 
dent to a critical attitude in connection with the general 
literature of mental development in childhood. These questions 
concern the suddenness of the waxing of delayed tendencies 
and the frequency of transitory tendencies. 

THE GRADUAL WAXING OF DELAYED INSTINCTS AND CAPACITIES 

It is a favorite dictum of superficial psychology and peda- 
gogy that instincts lie entirely dormant and then spring into 
full strength within a few weeks. At a certain stage, we 
are told, such and such a tendency has its 'nascent period' or 
ripening time. Three is the age for fear, six is the age for 
climbing, fifteen is the age for cooperativeness, and the like. 
The same doctrine is applied to the supposed 'faculties' or very 
general capacities of the mind. Within a year or two around 
eight the child is said to change from a mere bundle of sensory 
capacities, to a child possessed of imagination; somewhere 



ORDER AND DATES 261 

around thirteen another brief score of months brings his rea- 
soning up from near zero to nearly full energy; a year or 
two somewhere in the 'teens creates altruism! 

These statements are almost certainly misleading. The 
one instinct whose appearance seems most like a dramatic 
rushing upon life's stage — the sex instinct — is found upon 
careful study to be gradually maturing for years. The capa- 
city for reasoning shows no signs by any tests as yet given 



6 7 8 9 10 11 IS 13 14 15 Id 

Fig. 24. The average rate of tapping fof boys of each age from 6 to 16. The 
continuous line represents Gilbert's estimate ; the dash line represents Bryan's 
estimate (for the left- wrist-movement). 

of developing twice as much in any one year from five to 
twenty-five as in any other. In the cases where the differences 
between children of different ages may be taken roughly to 
measure the rate of inner growth of capacities, what data we 
have show nothing to justify the doctrine of sudden ripening 
in a serial order. Thus the results in the case of the rate 
of tapping (as on a telegraph key) for boys are shown in 
Figure 24. The dash line represents the average ability year 
by year from six to sixteen as determined by Bryan ['92]''' 

* For one of eight movements used by him, the 'Left Wrist.' 



262 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



and the continuous line that determined by Gilbert ['94]- 
Figure 25 shows the average of the two curves. These 
curves suggest fluctuations, notably a failure of the thirteen- 
year-olds to surpass the twelve-year-olds, a notable superiority 
of the sixteen-year-olds over the fifteen-year-olds, and a greater 
gain from six to eleven than thereafter, but the development 



30— 



25— 



20^ 



15- 



10- 



fe 5- 



L 



I 



L 



_L 



I 



J 
16 



to 



II 



12 



13 



14 



6 7 8 9 

AGE IN YEARS 

Fig. 25. The average of the two curves shown in Fig. 24. 



« 



of the capacity is, as a whole, gradual. At least, that word 
would seem to most observers to fit the progress measured 
by Figures 24 and 25. 

The few interests whose strength, period by period, have 
been more or less well measured, give no evidence of any 
sudden accession to power. Thus collecting * seems to increase 

* According to C. F. Biirk ['00] twelve hundred boys and girls reported 
to their teachers the names of the objects which they were at the time 



ORDER AND DATES 263 

in vigor gradually from before six to ten. The capacities 
of sensory discrimination, memory, observation and the like 
which have been measured in children at different ages, are 
of course in the conditions that they are at any age because of 
training as well as inner growth, and the facts concerning 
their rates of gain cannot be used at their face value in our 
argument. But so far as they do go, they give no support 
to the theory of the sudden rise of inner tendencies. Indeed 
every tendency that has been subjected to anything like rigid 
scrutiny seems to fit the word gradual rather than the word 
sudden in the rate of its maturing. 

In the case of the lower animals, where control of training 
and accurate measurement of the animal's performance is 
feasible, gradualness of development is found the rule for 
delayed instincts. Thus the author ['99] found that a dozen 
days or so were required from the first beginnings to the full 
development of fear of large moving objects in chicks, that 
the fighting of roosters shows its first feeble beginnings as 
early as the sixth day of the chick's life, that the balancing 
reaction (on a swinging perch) develops gradually from the 
sixth day on. 

collecting. The average number of collections reported by those of each 
age from six to seventeen is given as follows : 

Average Number of AcxrvE Collections for Different Ages 
Age Av. per B03' Av. per Girl Av. per Child 

6 years 1.2 1.9 1.4 collections 

7 " 2.1 2.6 2.3 " 

8 " 3-5 4-5 4 

9 " 3-9 4-1 4 

10 " 44 4.4 4-4 

11 " 34 3-2 3-3 

12 " 3 3 3 

13 " 3-5 3-4 3-4 

14 " 3 3 3 

15 " 2.7 3.2 3 

16 " 2.1 3.3 2.8 

17 " 2 3 2.5 

Such errors as children would make in their reports probably would 
act to make the rise from six to ten seem more sudden than it really was. 
Even as reported, the rise is very gradual. 



264 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

THE PROBABLE FREQUENCY OF TRANSITORINESS IN ORIGINAL 

TENDENCIES 

James' description of the fact of transitoriness and of its 
extent in man is the best introduction to the second of our 
questions. He says : — 

"Leaving lower animals aside, and turning to human in- 
stincts, we see the law of transiency corroborated on the widest 
scale by the alternation of different interests and passions as 
human life goes on. With the child, life is all play and fairy- 
tales and learning the external properties of 'things;' with the 
youth it is bodily exercises of a more systematic sort, novels of 
the real world, boon-fellowship and song, friendship and love, 
nature, travel and adventure, science and philosophy ; with the 
man, ambition and policy, acquisitiveness, responsibility to 
others, and the selfish zest of the battle of life. If a boy 
grows up alone at the age of games and sports, and learns 
neither to play ball, nor row, nor sail, nor ride, nor skate, nor 
fish, nor shoot, probably he will be sedentary to the end of his 
days ; and, though the best of opportunities be afforded him for 
learning these things later, it is a hundred to one but he will 
pass them by and shrink back from the effort of taking those 
necessary first steps the prospect of which, at an earlier age, 
w^ould have filled him with eager delight. The sexual passion 
expires after a protracted reign ; but it is well known that its 
peculiar manifestations in a given individual depend almost 
entirely on the habits he may form during the early period of 
its activity. Exposure to bad company then makes him a loose 
liver all his days; chastity kept at first makes the same easier 
later on. In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike the iron 
while hot, and to seize the wave of the pupil's interest in each 
successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge 
may be got and a habit of skill acquired — a headway of interest, 
in short, secured, on which afterward the individual may float. 
There is a happy moment for fixing skill in drawing, for mak- 
ing boys collectors in natural history, and presently dissectors 
and botanists ; then for initiating them into the harmonies of 
mechanics and the wonders of physical and chemical law. 
Later, introspective psychology and the metaphysical and re- 
ligious mysteries take their turn ; and last of all, the drama of 



ORDER AND DATES 



26 c 



human affairs and worldly wisdom in the widest sense of the 
term." ['93, a^oI. 2, p. 400 f.] 

The particular statements of this characteristic passage form 
a sagacious commentary on the loss of interests as a man grows 
up and becomes engaged in new pleasures and duties, but it is 
doubtful whether they do show the law of transiency to be very 
widely active in human instincts. Two forces, other than the 
law of transitoriness, must be considered, before attributing the 
ebbs in man's activities so exclusively to it. The first is the 
force of new situations — changed circumstances about man — 
rather than a changed nature in him. The second is the force 
of changes in his nature due to special acquisitions — learned 
habits — not to mere losses of transitory instincts and capacities. 

Consider, for example, the loss of zeal for 'play and fairy 
tales and learning the external properties of things' by the 
youth and grown man. Is not a part of the loss due to 
changed circumstances? Would not a man regain a portion 
of his zeal for play, if, say, all the fellow-members of his stock 
exchange or club or factory began by a miracle to play? Is it 
not, in part, the avoidance of the disapproval of his fellows 
which makes the youth or man cast off childish things. Given 
a situation such that play adds no discomforting moral or social 
results, and the youth or man does seem to act as if the sup- 
posedly lost zest had simply been held down by lack of a con- 
genial situation such as it customarily had in childhood. So 
the student body of a college may all spin tops or play marbles ; 
hard-headed brokers may gambol in an initiation festivity ; and 
joyless politicians may jump up and down and dance in a ring. 
Are not the pleasures of travel and the stock sports of amuse- 
ment-parks both evidence that the love of 'learning the external 
properties of things' persists in fair measure into adult years? 
New places, new sights, new experiences attract grown men 
and women also. It is even a stock item in everyday humor 
that the boy's craving for the circus is his father's excuse. 
The displays of aeroplanes of the last two years seem to be 
frequented by adults because of the same interest in learning 



266 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

the external properties of things which makes the child besiege 
the engine-house. 

Of the difference between the child and the adult in this 
respect which remains after changed circumstances have been 
allowed for, is not a part due to the addition of habits rather 
than the loss of instincts? 'To design a real engine in com- 
petition with other inventors under the stimulus of the world's 
needs expressed in money price and personal distinction' is so 
much more satisfying to man's nature — even to his original 
nature — than 'playing cars' or 'playing build bridges,' that the 
serious habit eventually makes the play out of which it sprang 
an inferior interest. If a man gets only innocent pleasure 
from hearing fairy tales, and gets not only innocent pleasure 
but also comforts for his family from writing them, we must 
expect that the habit will displace the less remunerative instinct. 
The youth may be more interested in the internal properties of 
things revealed by mechanics, electricity, chemistry and biology, 
just because he has already had, and used up, the satisfactions 
of knowing external facts about chairs and tables, tops and 
balls, horses and dogs. His apparently new interests may be 
the same fundamental interest turned to new objects because 
of a change produced in him by experience. The old objects 
have lost their appeal because of the connections they have 
acquired in the course of his training — not because of an inevit- 
able decay of some original welcoming force. 

The discounts for changes in the situation and acquired 
changes in the man, which I have suggested as necessary in the 
case of 'play and fairy tales and learning the external proper- 
ties of things,' can be shown to be appropriate in the case of 
the other losses incurred by the process of maturity which 
James has chosen. 

If this is the case with James's temperate account, what 
shall we say of those who describe the inner growth of man's 
instincts and capacities altogether as a series of tendencies, 
appearing, waiting, lasting a brief space and vanishing unless 
then and there fixed as habits — like the ripening of fruits which 



ORDER AND DATES 267 

soon decay unless preserved by the housewifery of habits, or 
like a procession of candidates which pass through an office, 
disappearing for good and all unless enlisted at the time and 
drilled by some recruiting officer of the mind. Such a sharp 
definition of the rise and fall of original tendencies in a serial 
order of stages or epochs seems to me to be a gross exaggera- 
tion, corresponding only here and there to the actual progress 
of inner development. 

To refute such extravagant notions of the suddenness of 
appearance of original tendencies, their brevity of stay and 
their disappearance without other cause than an inherent orig- 
inal transitoriness of the neural bonds, it should suffice to think 
over the tendencies themselves, each in connection with the 
treatment it receives at the hands of the changes produced by 
circumstances in the stimulating situation and responding 
organism. For example, the readiness of the hunting response 
persists even in spite of the inadequate stimuli and absence of 
rewards of a modern village or town, so that, if habitual 
restraints are removed, men will gladly leave their work to 
chase an escaped cat. They will, with slight encouragement, 
undergo notable privations and expense to spend a few days 
in tracking game and possessing themselves of animal carcasses 
got by so near an approach as is possible to man's original 
naked-handed pursuit. Collecting and hoarding survive the 
penalties which follow childish scavenging and adult waste of 
time. The drawers, closets and attics of five houses out of 
ten bear some witness to the tendency. Whole trades maintain 
themselves by ministering to its continued strength. One of 
the commonest hobbies of the rich man, though as a boy he may 
have been much below the average in zeal for collecting for a 
collection's sake, is to become a bibliophile, or connoisseur in 
rugs, or collector of paintings. Many stories could be told to 
illustrate the persistence in us all of that which makes the ten- 
year-old collect and hoard stamps or cigar tags. Mr. Keppel 
tells in his Golden Age of Engraving of a London dealer in 
engravings and etchings who, upon inheriting a small fortune. 



268 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

that clay locked his door and for the rest of his life sat like a 
miser amongst the prints he no longer had to sell. A former 
librarian of Harvard College is reported to have said exultingly 
one afternoon, "Every book belonging to the library is here 
except one and I am going to get that from Professor Child 
now." Many of my readers indeed will be able to testify to 
some similar irrational potency of collecting or hoarding in 
their own lives. The original satisfyingness of having some- 
thing behind one's back and over one's head when resting which 
we called the instinct of shelter or habitation persists, as James 
himself has shown, in our "feigning a shelter within a shelter 
by backing up beds in rooms with their heads against the 
walls, and never lying in them the other way.*' The migratory 
tendency, if it is instinctive at all, is surely potent even in those 
who, for long years, could not indulge it. Witness the number 
of elderly creatures, of even the home-loving sex, whom one 
finds on trains and steamboats and in hotels. 

The most probably instinctive stimuli to fear, — thunder, 
reptiles, large suddenly approaching animals, darkness and 
strange persons — seem to retain a. fair measure of their power 
except for contrary habits. Facts of any sort about fears are 
dubious, and the complications due to training are troublesome 
to allow for, so that it is conceivable that the occasional mani- 
festations of the tendency keep it alive in spite of an inherent 
transitoriness. But it would be very risky to undertake to 
explain even half of the persistent fears of thunder, darkness 
and strangers as habits retained long after their original 
impetus had waned. And no one, I judge, will assert that the 
avoidance of snakes and fear of large animals is an instinct 
limited to childhood. 

So I might continue with pugnacity, motherly behavior, 
gregariousness, responses to and responses by approval and 
scorn, mastery and submission, the sex instincts, rivalry, jeal- 
ous behavior, kindliness, bullying, visual exploration, manipula- 
tion, curiosity and the other human original tendencies im- 



ORDER AND DATES 269 

portant for educational theory and practice.* Transitoriness 
is a fact ; instincts do wax and wane ; but the waning is far less 
frequent, far more gradual and far later in its onset, than the 
ordinary descriptions of stages, epochs, fluctuations and the like 
would lead one to believe. Much of human behavior can be 
explained by certain original tendencies which wane slowly or 
not at all, except in so far as the consequences of their mani- 
festations stamp them out, or the law of disuse slowly weakens 
them. 

*I may note that a beginning was made with the hunting instinct at 
random, and that the evidence against early and sudden waning is fully 
as strong in the case of the 'social' instincts as in the case of hunting, 
collecting, sheltering, migration and fears. 



chapter xvii 
The Value and Use of Original Tendencies 

At the beginning of this volume it was stated that human 
welfare required that some original tendencies be cherished, 
that some be redirected or modified, and that others be elim- 
inated outright. Such is the ordinary common-sense view ex- 
pressed, for example, by Meumann ['07, edition of '11, p. 699 
f.] in the following passage: — 

Wherever we compare the child who has been relatively 
left to himself with the child of like age who has been more 
subjected to training, we see that the more educated child has 
progressed very, very much farther than the child left more to 
himself; and further, where our present education as a whole 
neglects certain functions, these remain far below what the 
child might achieve. We could also recall such cases as that 
of Caspar Hauser, who grew up in a pig-pen and reached only 
the condition of a beast for lack of education, while he proved 
himself to be a normally endowed human being as soon as train- 
ing v/as given him. We do not, however, need such excep- 
tional cases. We see still more in the two phenomena men- 
tioned here, that wherever the development of the child is even 
only relatively left to itself, the whole mental development has 
from the start the character of lack of system and imperfection 
and inadequacy and pure chance in the results attained. . . . 

From these facts it follows that we cannot leave the child 
to its natural development ; for natural development ( i ) does 
not attain what the subject of education can achieve by his 
organization and his capacities, and (2) does not attain what 
the subject of education as a grown-up human being must 
attain. We could make this clear by any examples at random, 
but let me refer only to the development of speech, which shows 
these two phenomena with especial distinctness. The speech 
of the child who is left to himself would neither develop in 
general into a cultivated speech, nor to the correct speech of 
his surroundings ; and the child who is neglected in linguistic 

270 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 271 

matters remains as a rule quantitatively and qualitatively many 
years behind the child of good linguistic training. From this 
it follows that education cannot leave development to itself, 
wherefore it opposes natural development with a certain pres- 
sure. . . . All procedures of education must be oriented from 
two points of view. They must be at the same time according 
to ideals and according to nature, — that is, they must strive to 
realize the aims of education in the best manner, and they can 
in general do that only if they are adapted step by step to the 
laws of the development of the child," 

To most of my readers it will seem evident that original 
nature includes tendencies that are good, tendencies that cnn 
be used for good, and tendencies that had best be abolished. 
The fact that maternal affection, curiosity and cruelty are 
original tendencies would seem sufficient proof of the statement, 
but it has been denied by two extreme views, one that original 
nature is essentially wrong and untrustworthy, the other that 
original nature is always right. The former view, though 
probably as fair as the latter, is now in universal disrepute and 
need not detain us. The latter, by being attractive to senti- 
mentalists, absolutist philosophers and believers in a distorted 
and fallacious form of the doctrine of evolution, has been of 
great influence upon educational theories. Since it is also 
championed to som^e extent by so eminent a student of human 
nature as Stanley Hall, it must be considered seriously. 

THE DOCTRINE OF NATURe's INFALLIBILITY 

By the 'Nature is Right' doctrine, the actual terminus of 
evolution is the moral end of human action. What is going to 
be, is right. Our duty is to abstain from interfering with 
nature, supposing such interference to be possible. A child 
should be trained up in the way that the inner impulse of 
development leads him to go. The siimmum boniun for the 
race is to live out its own evolution with interest and freedom. 
No stage to which nature impels, should by human artifice be 
either hastened or prolonged, lest the magic order be disturbed. 



2/2 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

The ideal for humanity is to be sought in its natural outcome, 
in what it of itself tends to be, irrespective of training. Human 
effort should be to let the inner forces of development do their 
perfect work. 

This doctrine that the unlearned tendencies of man are 
right is assumed in a vague way as a support for one or another 
proposal about educational practice more often than it is stated 
straightforwardly as a general principle. But the quotations 
that follow will serve as a composite statement and illustration 
of it as a general principle. 

"No influence that works in opposition to this development 
(that of original nature) and to the law of the inheritance of 
racial traits in order can ever reach a suitable adaptation, but 
only disturbs the natural course of development, and creates 
abnormal, misdirected endeavor." [Schneider, '82, p. 489] 

"Only here (in the original tendencies or 'natural develop- 
ment' of the individual and of the race) can we hope to find 
true norms against the tendencies to precocity in home, school, 
church, and civilization generally, and also to establish criteria 
by which to both diagnose and measure arrest and retardation 
in the individual and the race." [G. Stanley Hall, '04, Pre- 
face, p. viii] 

"Thus exercise ought to develop nature's first intention and 
fulfill the law of nascent periods, or else not only no good but 
great harm may be done." [Hall, '04, vol. i, p. 208] 

"These nativistic and more or less feral instincts can and 
should be fed and formed. . . . The teacher's art should so 
vivify all that the resources of literature, tradition, history, can 
supply which represents the crude, rank virtues of the race's 
childhood, that . . . the child can enter upon his full heritage, 
live out each stage of his life to the fullest, and realize 
in himself all its manifold tendencies." [I^all, '04, Preface, p. 
xi] 

. . . "an evolutionist must hold that the best and not the 
worst will survive and prevail." [Hall, '04, Preface, p. 
xviii] 

Of motor development Stanley Hall writes : "All parts 
should act in all possible ways at first and untrammeled by the 
activity of all other parts and functions. . . . All movements 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 273 

arising from spontaneous activity of nerve cells or centers must 
be made." [Hall, '04, vol. i, p. 161] 

The same author uses the alleged fact that in the early 
'teens muscular strength increases rapidly, while accuracy in 
movement improves only slightly as a sufficient reason for 
advising "that for a few years the stress should incline to the 
larger sthenic or coarser strength forms of development, and 
that precision should have less relative emphasis." ['04, vol. 
I, p. 147] 

Guillet says : "Since it is the order of nature that the new 
organism should pass through certain developmental stages, it 
behooves us to study nature's plan, and to seek rather to aid 
than to thwart it. For nature must be right ; there is no higher 
criterion." [Guillet, '00, p. 427] 

Acher says : "It thus becomes the imperative duty of edu- 
cators to follow this course of development and work with the 
current of psychic evolution and not against it as is so often the 
case at present." [Acher, '10, p. 115] 

To these extraordinary renunciations of any hope of improv- 
ing upon the unguided course of inner growth common sense 
at once opposes the facts that lying, stealing, torturing, ignor- 
ance, irrational fears, and a hundred weaknesses and vices, are 
original in man. 

Schneider, Stanley Hall, and others who have proclaimed 
that 'Nature is right' and used the doctrine as a pillar of their 
theories of education, were not ignorant of these facts. Nor 
did they forget such facts temporarily in zeal for their attrac- 
tive doctrine. They offer, or could offer, three explanations 
of these apparently wrong original tendencies in man. 

First, an original tendency that is undesirable, in and of 
itself, may be the prerequisite of some desirable tendency and 
hence, on the whole, desirable. 

"Children," writes Burk, frequently persist in follovving 
some strange, useless or even savage interests quite foreign to 
our civilization . . . these strange and useless experiences 
nevertheless may be essential as a platform out of which a 
higher coordination, useful for modern life, may be reached. 
The intermediate stage or level may be useless or even inimical 
18 



274 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

to our civilization, but yet as a link in evolution, be none the 
less essential." [Burk, F. L., '98, p. 24] 

In Stanley Hall's words, "Many an impulse seeks expres- 
sion, which seems strong for a time, but which will never be 
heard of later. Its function is to stimulate the next higher 
power that can only thus be provoked to development, in order 
to direct, repress or supersede it. . . . Nearly every latency 
must be developed, or else some higher power, that later tempers 
and coordinates it, lacks normal stimulus to develop." ['04, 
vol. 2, pp. 90-91] Thus the miscellaneous and apparently 
futile finger movements of babies may be a necessary fore-run- 
ner of reaching, grasping, holding, and the like. 

Second, An original tendency, undesirable in and of itself, 
may on the whole be desirable because it is the necessary corre- 
late or result of some desirable tendency. 

The tendency to righteous anger may involve a tendency to 
mere raging. Love may be unable' to exist in full measure 
without jealousy of the irrational, cruel and mean sort. In 
Stanley Hall's opinion, "An able-bodied young man, who can 
not fight physically, can hardly have a high and true sense of 
honor, and is generally a milk-sop, a lady-boy, or a sneak." 
['04, vol. I, p. 217] 

Third, a tendency undesirable in and of itself would, on the 
whole, be desirable, if hy its presence in early life, man is pro- 
tected from the same tendency later. 

If being a thief at five and a bully at ten kept one from 
being a thief and a bully from twenty-five to seventy, these 
original tendencies would of course be desirable as lesser evils. 
That original tendencies do sometimes thus preventively inocu- 
late and immunize has been asserted by Stanley Hall and 
many of his followers. 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 275 

THE DOCTRINE OF CATHARSIS 

A few quotations may serve to present this doctrine fairly. 

"Rudimentary organs need to be not only developed, but 
often used in order to dwindle in form and function, and to 
make place for the next higher organs and functions, for which 
they, in the higher forms of life, are mere, although indispen- 
sible, succedanea. Stimulus and use, at a certain stage, seem 
to be necessary, not to make them develop, as in the case with 
most tissues . . . but to directly cause their gradual atrophy." 
[Hall and Allin, '97, p. 17] 

"Rudimentary organs of the soul now suppressed, perverted, ■ 
or delayed, to crop out in menacing forms later, would be 
developed in their season so that we should be immune to them 
in maturer years." [Hall, '04, Preface, p. x] 

. . . "faculties and impulses, which are denied legitimate 
expression during their nascent periods, break out well on in 
adult hfe." [Hall, '04, vol. 2, p. 90] 

"It seems a law of psychic development, that more or less 
evil must be done to unloose the higher powers of constraint 
and to practice them until they can keep down the baser in- 
stincts." [Hall, '04, vol. 2, p. 83] 

Burk, who does not himself decide that the doctrine of im- 
munization by early attacks is true, gives one of the best state- 
ments of it in the case of teasing and bullying. It is, he says, — 
"the view that exercise of these impulses in children's plays and 
games does not strengthen them, but, on the contrary, drains 
off the energy in a natural and harmless way, in a sort of vac- 
cination sense. If these impulses were not allowed free expres- 
sion in natural plays and forms of amusement, such as teasing, 
then in their restraint this energy would remain as a poison to 
the whole system and later give rise to criminal outbreaks. 
This view regards the plays of childhood as the safety valves 
to prevent repression and internal development in forms later 
to break forth in deeds of criminal passion." ['97, p. 370] 

"Now what are the applications of this view to many of 
these strange complexes that appear in early childhood, even 
to include such seemingly evil forms as those which appear in 
cruelty, bullying and teasing? May it not be, indeed, that they 
constitute a level in the evolutionary hierarchy, and though in 
themselves useless, are nevertheless an essential platform from 



276 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

which the coordinations of a higher and useful level are 
formed? It is plausible that the child needs to live to some 
extent the life of his ancestors in order actually to develop in 
his owrn nervous system the kinaesthetic sensations which by 
the process of higher evolution may serve as the basis for 
higher forms of activity in the highest levels? It becomes 
indeed a question of extreme nicety to determine just the exact 
moment when sufficient actual experience has fully established 
the racial tendency and the time for inhibition and radiation 
of the force into higher cerebral associations should follow. 
Danger of arrest of development at the lower stage is as im- 
portant as that the fundamental impressions should not be 
made. Such a view gives these curious phenomena a natural 
place in child life, and emphasizes the probability that chil- 
dren's plays and games, as mild vaccination forms, serve as 
mediations between brutal ancestral tendencies in the nervous 
system, and the higher levels employed in altruistic modern 
life, between savage racial action and civilized ideation." 
[Burk, '98, p. 42] 

Stanley Hall uses the term Catharsis as a name for this 
doctrine of later immunity through early indulgences and also 
for the radically different doctrine that later immunity is fav- 
ored by early esthetic contemplation of the vice or imaginative 
participation in it.* The second use appears in such state- 
ments as : 

"I incline to think that many children would be better and 
not worse for reading, provided it can be done in tender years, 
stories like those of Captain Kidd, Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin, 
and other gory tales, and perhaps later tales like Eugene Aram, 
the ophidian medicated novel, Elsie Venner, etc., on the prin- 
ciple of the Aristotelian catharsis to arouse betimes the higher 
faculties which develop later, and whose function it is to deplete 
the bad centers and suppress or inhibit their activity." ['04, 
vol. I, p. 408] 

The extent to which this doctrine of immunization by 
early wrong-doing is carried is well illustrated in the following 

*In this second form, the doctrine of Catharsis lends no support to 
the theory of nature's infallibility in the case of the tendencies toward 
actual greed, cruelty, envy, jealousy, lust and revenge. It defends only 
indulgence in the contemplation of representations of such actualities. 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 277 

recommendations of selfishness, greed, lying and cheating by 
Kline and France : — 

"Do we believe that the child recapitulates the history of 
the race? If so we may not be surprised to find the passion 
for property-getting a natural one, nor that the child lies, 
cheats and steals to acquire it or that selfishness rules the child's 
actions. Selfishness is the cornerstone of the struggle for 
existence, deception is at its very foundation, while the acquir- 
ing of property has been the most dominant factor in the his- 
tory of men and nations. These passions of the child are but 
the pent up forces of the greed of thousands of years. They 
must find expression and exercise, if not in childhood, later. 
Who knows but what our misers are not those children grown 
up whom fond mothers and fathers forced into giving away 
their playthings, into the doing of unselfish acts, in acting out 
a generosity which was neither felt nor understood. Not to 
let these activities have their play in childhood is to run a great 
risk. It does no good to make the child perform moral acts 
when it does not appreciate what right and wrong mean, and 
to punish a child for not performing acts which his very nature 
compels him to do, is doing that child positive injury. 

During the period of adolescence, generosity and altruism 
spring up naturally. Then why try to force the budding 
plant into blossom? Instruct them by all means, teach them 
the right; but if this fails, do not punish, but let the child be 
selfish, let him lie and cheat, until these forces spend themselves. 
Do not these experiences of the child give to man in later life 
a moral virility?" ['99, p. 455] 

DEFECTS IN MAN^S ORIGINAL NATURE 

These three subsidiary hypotheses (that an intrinsically 
undesirable tendency may be! the prerequisite of some desirable 
tendency, or its necessary correlate, or the means of immuniza- 
tion from a similar but worse tendency later) do not, how- 
ever, supply all the shortcomings of the 'Nature is Right' doc- 
trine. The first and second of them, while very probably true 
of certain tendencies, do not provide greed, insane rage, cruelty, 
and many others, with any adequate excuse. The experience 
of families, schools and states, has not found that interference 



278 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

with these instincts withers the hopes of any noble traits. Nor 
does present knowledge of the relations of mental traits lead 
us to expect that these instincts are necessarily bound to any 
compensating advantages. The great majority of the original 
tendencies which can be defended by the hope that they are 
bound as cause or effect or correlative to some valuable quality 
of mind are either such as no wise judge would consider wrong 
— for example, general activity of body and of mind ; or such 
as produce the good quality only by being interfered zvith, re- 
directed, modified in situation, response, or both. 

The third hypothesis, that rage, teasing, bullying, envy, 
neglect of absolute values, and the like, will, if denied exercise, 
inhibited or redirected when they appear as man's original 
nature decrees, be all the more potent and mischievous in the 
long run, is then necessary if nature's infallibility is to be 
saved. It was in fact invented to save it. 

Very strong evidence should be required before believing 
that the exercise of any function thus weakens it. For such 
mental immunization is directly contrary to one of the most 
nearly universal laws of mental life, the law of exercise. Still 
stronger evidence should be required before believing that the 
exercise of any function to which an original impulse leads 
weakens it. For the exercise of an original tendency is almost 
always satisfying, other things being equal. Hence mental 
immunization by an early attack is here directly contrary to 
the law of effect. 

There can, indeed, be no doubt that the laws of habit are 
the rule, that ordinarily the exercise of any tendency with satis- 
fying or indifferent results strengthens the tendency, and that 
an original tendency will persist unless it is transitory by nature, 
is prevented from functioning, or is checked or redirected by 
other forces. If immunization by early indulgence occurs at 
all, it occurs as an exception for which adequate special reasons 
must be given. 

No one has given adequate special reasons, or indeed rea- 
sons of any kind worth mentioning. In fact, Stanley Hall 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 2/9 

himself often abandons the doctrine and returns to the 
orthodox theory that education must redirect original tenden- 
cies. For example, he writes that we shall "utilize most of the 
energy now wasted in crime by devising more wholesome and 
natural expressions for the instincts that motivate it" ['04, vol. 
I, p. 342 j. Anger's "culture requires proper selection of ob- 
jects and great transformation, but never extermination." 
['04, vol. I, p. 355] "The popular idea, that youth must have 
its fling, implies the need of greatly and sometimes suddenly 
widened liberty, which nevertheless needs careful supervision 
and wise direction." ['04, vol. 2, pp. 89-90] Hall even says 
flatly that "the spontaneous expressions of this best age and 
condition of life (youth in college), with no other occupation 
than their own development, have shown reversions as often as 
progress." ['04, vol. 2, p. 399] 

Finally it must be said that under the pressure of obvious 
facts even the most ardent advocates of nature's infallibility 
always somewhere give the doctrine up. So Stanley Hall 
writes : — 

. . . "now another remove from nature seems to be made 
necessary by the manifold knowledges and skills of our highly 
complex civilization . . . the child must be subjected to special 
disciplines and be apprenticed to the higher qualities of adult- 
hood, for he is not only a product of nature, but a candidate 
for a highly developed humanity. To many, if not most, of 
the influences here there can be at first but little inner response. 
. . . The wisest requirements seem to the child more or less 
alien, arbitrary, heteronomous, artificial, falsetto." ['04, Pref- 
ace, p. xii] 

Burk's compromise is explained in the two following 
quotations : — 

"There is a familiar dispute in pedagogy whether or not 
the child should be always allowed to follow his inclinations. 
One party maintains the extreme position that we should fol- 
low blindly the child's interest. Another party stands aghast 
at the proposal. From this present standpoint taken must we 
not first discover whether a specific tendency in question is 
"fundamental" or "accessory?" If deeply fundamental, we 



28o THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

must follow nature. If the tendency is one in its accessoiy 
period of development, we may perhaps allow objective factors 
largely to determine." [Burk, '98, p. 49] 

"i. That, taking the activities independently, there is an 
early period in the development of each part or process, when 
the purpose of education must be to follow the fixed innate 
hereditary line of tendency, and to allow the racial instincts 
fullest play of development (fundamental education). 

2. That there follows a later period, in an activity's devel- 
opment, when it passes partially out of the fixed control of 
racial habit, and becomes more plastic to present environment 
(accessory education)." [Burk, '98, p. 63] 

Guillet, who asserts that 'Nature must be right,' later un- 
consciously recants fully. "These instincts, then, which every 
child has . . . must be turned into worthy grooves. Not 
suppression, but a generous control" ['00, p. 445] 

So, after climbing to the dizzy height of the faith that 
original nature is perfect and balancing there awhile with the 
aid of the doctrine of preventive inoculation, we all come down 
again to the solid fact that original nature is very often and 
veiy much imperfect and wrong. 

The imperfections and misleadings of original nature are 
in fact many and momentous. The common good requires 
that each child learn countless new lessons and unlearn a large 
fraction of his natural birthright. The main reason for this 
is that original equipment is archaic, adapting the human 
animal for the life that might be led by a family group of wild 
men in the woods, amongst the brute forces of land, water, 
wind, rain, plants, animals, and other groups of wild men. The 
life to which original nature adapts man is probably far more 
like the life of the wolf or ape, than like the life that now is, as 
a result of human art, habit and reasoning, perpetuating them- 
selves in language, tools, buildings, books and customs. 

It is a useful, if trite, exercise to consider this enormous 
gap between the fate of man left to what the human germ 
plasm has learned and the opportunity to which the learning 
of men themselves calls each new generation. How easily we 
revert to a nearly simian brutality when the records and 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 281 

restraints of civilization fail is the best proof and illustration 
of the unfitness of original nature to rule the behavior of man. 

Other illustrations in abundance can be found of the archaic 
unreason of original nature, or, more scientifically, of the 
thoroughgoing transformation which life undergoes in propor- 
tion as human reason works back upon the conditions of things 
and the wants of men. By the germs' decree we fear, not the 
carriers of malaria and yellow fever, but thunder and the dark ; 
we pity, not the gifted youth debarred from education, but the 
beggar's bloody sore; we are less excited by a great injustice 
than by a little blood ; we suffer more from such scorn as un- 
tipped waiters, cabmen, and barbers show, than from our own 
idleness, ignorance and folly. 

It is also true that even to a brute's life in the woods human 
instincts are not perfectly adapted, or without gross errors. 
To exist, a species needs to behave so as to exist, but not so as 
to exist well. A species can, and most species do, make many 
blunders in life. 'Good' means in evolution only 'good enough 
to keep the species from elimination,' and 'best' means only the 
surest aids to survival that have happened to happen. 

The original tendencies of man have not been right, are not 
right, and probably never will be right. By them alone few of 
the best wants in human life would have been felt, and fewer 
still satisfied. Nor would the crude, conflicting, perilous wants 
which original nature so largely represents and serves, have 
had much more fulfilment. Original nature has achieved what 
goodness the world knows as a state achieves order, by killing, 
confining or reforming some of its elements. It progresses, 
not by laisses faire, but by changing the environment in which 
it operates and by renewedly changing itself in each generation. 
Man is now as civilized, rational and humane as he is because 
man in the past has changed things into shapes more satisfying, 
and changed parts of his own nature into traits more satisfying, 
to man as a whole. Man is thus eternally altering himself to 
suit himself. His nature is not right in his own eyes. Only 
one thing in it, indeed, is unreservedly good, the power to make 






282 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

it better. This power, the power of learning or modification 
in favor of the satisfying, the capacity represented by the law 
of effect, is the essential principle of reason and right in the 
world. 

THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES IN DETAIL 

Since original nature is neither all wrong, as our Puritanic 
ancestors tried to believe, nor all right, as the modern disciples 
of educational laisses faire try to believe, we cannot deal with 
it wholesale. Reason has to improve on nature without wasting 
it, by using each of its tendencies in view of all the rest and in 
view of the complicated apparatus of things and customs with 
which original nature interacts. 

The problems of whether to cherish the tendency as it is, to 
inhibit it altogether or to modify it in part and, in the last case, 
the problem of just what modification to make — may occasion- 
ally be solved easily, but oftener demand elaborate study, rare 
freedom from superstition, and both care and insight in balanc- 
ing goods. Indeed, many of the answers which to us now seem 
self-evident and sure were got only by long experiment and the 
acuity of some sage of the past. 

It seems clear to us now that the extreme cultivation of the 
instincts of submissive and frightened behavior in the masses 
through centuries past restrained progress and denied the com- 
mon good; we can hardly help inferring that the leaders of 
men were much less humane then than now, and perpetuated 
submission and fear rather than curiosity, experimentation and 
kindliness, wholly in their own selfish interest. But greater 
ignorance rather than greater ill-will was probably the major 
cause of the difference between then and now. The kings, 
priests and teachers of those days did not know that men could 
be trustworthy through freedom, and virtuous through love 
and self-respect. 

Again, we are able to see the value of studying, rather than 
propitiating, the world's forces, simply because the Galileos, 
Kepplers and Darwins have taught us. It is well to recall that 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 283 

Galileo was persecuted by 'the best people' of his time and that 
within a life-span there were honorable, devoted servants of 
human welfare who would have thanked God in the best of 
faith if fire had come down from Heaven to destroy Darwin 
and the Origin of Species with him. 

Consider the 'best present practice/ which permits and 
encourages the instincts of curiosity, mental control and multi- 
form mental activity to work for years with the cheap fancies 
about flowers, seeds, and animals, devised by ignorant women ; 
or with the petty details of bygone mythologies ; or with little 
or nothing in national life save its military campaigns; or with 
the elaborate mnemonic and deductive exercises of the Latin 
language; or with unreformed spelling. To the author it 
seems clear that the direction of these instincts into these chan- 
nels is an intolerable waste. But it does not seem so to others 
with equal or better rights to decide. 

Or take the very kindliness, of which some of us, in our 
zeal for the brotherhood of man, cannot have too much. We 
may be shocked to find a part of the plea of the drunken don 
in Wells' story for 'hate and coarse thinking' made soberly by 
a gifted psychologist. But we, who would choke off personal 
hate into antagonism toward qualities and actions alone, must 
find answers to Professor McDougall's contention that anger 
and fighting have been blessings in disguise. 

'Tt might seem at first sight that this instinct, which leads 
men and societies so often to enter blindly upon deadly con- 
tests that in many cases are destructive to both parties, could 
only be a survival from man's brutal ancestry, and that an early 
and a principal feature of social evolution would have been the 
eradication of this instinct from the human mind. But a 
little reflection will show us that its operation, far from being 
wholly injurious, has been one of the essential factors in the 
evolution of the higher forms of social organisation, and, 
in fact, of those specifically social qualities of man, the high 
development of which is an essential condition of the higher 
social life." ['08, p. 281, f.] 

This contention McDougall supports by arguing that early 



284 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

in man's history the power of subjecting one's impulses to a 
recognized law arose from fighting within the family group; 
that, later on, fighting was a necessary condition for the develop- 
ment of cooperative life; and that, even today, energy, inde- 
pendence and manliness depend upon the presence of this in- 
stinct in full strength. 

"When in any region social organisation had progressed so 
far that the mortal combat of individuals was replaced by the 
mortal combat of tribes, villages, or groups of any kind, success 
in combat and survival and propagation must have been favored 
by, and have depended upon, not only the vigour and ferocity 
of individual fighters, but also, and to an even greater degree, 
upon the capacity of individuals for united action, upon good 
comradeship, upon personal trustworthiness, and upon the 
capacity of individuals to subordinate their impulsive tendencies 
and egoistic promptings to the ends of the group and to the 
commands of the accepted leader. Hence, wherever such mor- 
tal conflict of groups prevailed for many generations, it must 
have developed in the surviving groups just those social and 
moral qualities of individuals Vvhich are the essential conditions 
of all effective cooperation and of the higher forms of social 
organisation. For success in war implies definite organisation, 
the recognition of a leader, and faithful observance of his 
commands. . . ." 

"This process must have developed not only the individual 
fighting qualities, but also the qualities that make for conscien- 
tious conduct and stable and efficient social organisation. These 
effects were clearly marked in the barbarians who overran the 
Roman Empire. The Germanic tribes were perhaps more 
pugnacious and possessed of the military virtues in a higher 
degree than any other people that has existed before or since. 
They were the most terrible enemies, as Julius Caesar found ; 
they could never be subdued because they fought, not merely 
to gain any specific ends, but because they loved fighting, i.e., 
because they were innately pugnacious. Their religion and the 
character of their gods reflected their devotion to war; centuries 
of Christianity have failed to eradicate this quality, and the 
smallest differences of opinion and belief continue to furnish 
the pretexts for fresh combats. Mr. Kidd argues strongly 
that it is the social qualities developed by this process of mili- 
tary group-selection which, more than anything else, have 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 285 

enabled these peoples to build up a new civilisation on the ruins 
of the Roman Empire, and to carry on the progress of social 
organisation and of civilisation to the point it has now reached." 
['08, pp. 286-291, passim] 

European people and the Japanese versus the Chinese and 
Hindoos, are used as evidence of this supposed relation. 

McDougall's argument seems to me fallacious in that, as 
he himself indeed later suggests, pugnacious behavior is a 
symptom, rather than a cause, of energy, and subjection to law 
and cooperation for the good of the community could have 
developed, and perhaps did develop, rather from hunting, agri- 
culture, industry and sport than from combat with other men. 
Whatever be the past and present goods and evils of fighting, 
however, a too abstract and indiscriminate cultivation of gentle- 
ness, lave and fine thinking is surely risky. We must cherish 
kindliness without incurring pusillanimity; and must correct 
pugnacity without putting the men in whom we have directed 
it toward abstract evils at the mercy of any embryonic Napo- 
leons in whom we have left its selfish aggressiveness unim- 
paired. 

So much for a warning that the opportunities for sagacity 
in evaluating human original tendencies as ends, and in adapt- 
ing them as means to other ends, are practically inexhaustible. 
The warning also implies that any account of the use of par- 
ticular original tendencies must be incomplete. The account 
to be given here will be still more so, of deliberate purpose. I 
shall not try to give here even a resume of the little that is 
known, but only two sample notes: — one to illustrate the prob- 
lems of the use of original tendencies as ends ; the other to illus- 
trate their use as means, — and a review of some of the general 
facts needed to economize planning and experimentation with 
such problems. Any further details may best be left to treatises 
on special lines of educational endeavor. Books on the 'Teach- 
ing of Reading' or the 'Teaching of Arithmetic,' or 'Moral 
Education,' or 'Education in Music' or 'The Prevention of 
Crime,' or 'The Reform of Marriage,' or the like, should in 



286 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

each case begin with an account of the way in which original 
nature is to be used toward the attainment of the particular 
features of eventual nature which are its topics. 

The two notes will deal with the use, or rather misuse, of 
emulation as an end and of ideomotor action as a means. The 
general facts reviewed will be, in order : 

Original versus 'Natural' tendencies. 

The Importance of the Original Satisfiers and Annoyers. 

The True Significance of Plasticity. 

Which Instincts are of Most Worth? 

Original Nature as the Ultimate Source of All Values. 

ORIGINAL TENDENCIES AS ENDS : EMULATION IN THE CASE OF 
SCHOOL 'marks' 

Present customs with respect to the measurement of a 
pupil's achievement in school studies fall into two groups. On 
the one hand, we have a somewhat detailed record kept, and 
made known to the student, in terms of a scale from o to lOO, 
or from F through D-, D, D^-, C--, C, C+, B-, B, B+, 
A— to A or A+. On the other hand, we have a deliberately 
crude record kept and made known to the student — such as 
F or P, or F, D, C, B, A. Or we have a crude or detailed 
record kept, but only some crude features of it made known to 
the student. During the last thirty years there has been a 
very strong movement from detailed to crude records of 
achievement, and from publicity to secrecy. 

The reasons alleged for the change have been that detailed 
grades and publicity encourage a pupil to work for 'marks,' 
and for excellence in the sense of excelling others, instead of 
for knowledge or power, and for excellence in the sense of 
improvement. 

In my opinion the change was an extremely wasteful way 
of avoiding one evil by the unnecessary sacrifice of all its 
attendant goods — a way whose wastefulness should have been 
apparent upon consideration of the nature of the situations 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 287 

involved and the original tendencies used. The essential fault 
of the older schemes for school grades or marks was that the 
'86' or 'B— ' did not mean any objectively defined amount of 
knowledg-e or power or skill — that, for example, John's attain- 
ment of 91 in second-year German did not inform him (or 
anyone else) about how difficult a passage he could translate, 
how many words he knew the English equivalents of and how 
accurately he could pronounce, or about any other fact save 
that he was supposed to be slightly more competent than some- 
one else marked 89 was, or than he would have been if he had 
been so marked. 

The marks given by any one teacher, though standing for 
some obscure standards of absolute achievement — that is, 
amounts of actual knowledge, power, skill, and the like — in 
the teacher's mind, could stand, in the mind of anyone else 
unacquainted with these inner meanings, only for degrees of 
relative achievement — for being at the top or at the bottom, for 
being above or below something. Inevitably other pupils were 
chosen as that something, and, except in the case of the one 
objectively defined difference between enough and not enough 
to allow promotion to the next class, school marks functioned 
as measures of superiority and inferiority amongst pupils, and 
of little else. A pupil who made excellence an aim of his school 
work was encouraged by every feature of the school's measure- 
ments of his work to think of excellence as excelling others — ■ 
relative achievement — outdoing someone else. Finding that 
pupils did so, and being rightly suspicious of this gross form 
of emulation as an end in education, school officers took the 
easy, but wasteful, way of depriving the pupil of any save the 
vaguest knowledge of his achievement. To keep him from 
focussing his attention upon his achievement in comparison 
with his fellow students' achievements, the}^ kept from him any 
detailed record whatsoever of his achievement. 

To work for marks is not intrinsically bad. If the marks 
are, as they should be, correct measures of either the amount 
of knowledge, power, appreciation and skill attained or the 



288 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

amount of progress made, to work for marks means simply to 
work for knowledge, power, increase in knovv^ledge and power 
and the like as recognized and measured. The detailed nature 
and the report to the individual of his school marks were not 
the vices of the old system. Its vice was its relativity and 
indefiniteness — the fact already described that a given mark 
did not mean any defined amount of knowledge, or power, or 
skill — so that it was bound to be used for relative achievement 
only. 
^ The proper remedy is not to eliminate all stimulus to 
rivalry, and along with it a large part of the stimulus to achieve- 
ment in general, but to redirect the rivalry into the tendencies 
to go higlier on an objective scale for absolute achievement, to 
surpass one's own past performance, to get into what, in 
athletic parlance, is called a 'higher class,' to compete within 
that class, and to compete cooperatively as one of a group in 
rivalry with another group. 

Suppose, for example, that instead of the traditional '89's 
or 'good's a pupil had records of just how many ten-digit addi- 
tions he could compute correctly in five minutes, of just how 
difficult a passage he could translate correctly at sight, and of 
how long it required, and the like. He could, of course, still 
compare himself with others, but he would not be compelled to 
do so. He could be encouraged, instead, to compare his present 
achievement with last month's, to beat his record, or the record 
for an average ten-year-old, and to work for entrance to a 
'twenty-example' class comparable to the 'two-thirty' class of 
trotting horses. In fact, in so far as excelling others would 
under these conditions imply and emphasize making absolute 
progress upward on a scale for real achievement, and would 
mean that a pupil outdid by a special effort those who ordinarily 
could do as well as he — those in his own 'class' as that term is 
used in sport, — even direct rivalry with others would be inno- 
cent and healthy. 

Rivalry with one's own past and with a "bogey," or accepted 
standard, is entirely feasible, once we have absolute scales for 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 289 

educational achievement comparable to the scales for the speed 
at which one can run or the height to which one can jump. 
Such scales are being constructed. The strength of such im- 
personal rivalry as a motive, while not as great for the two 
or three who would compete to lead the class under the old 
system as that system's emphasis on rivalry with others, is far 
greater for the rest of the group. To be seventeenth instead 
of eighteenth, or twenty-third instead of twenty-fifth, does not 
approach in moving force the zeal to beat one's own record, 
to see one's practice curve rise week by week, and to get up to 
the standard which permits one to advance to a new feat. Mr. 
T. H. Kirby* found in the case of fifth-grade pupils that, by 
thus reporting to each pupil his absolute achievement in 
measured tests in addition, sixty minutes of drill resulted in an 
improvement of over 50 percent in speed with a slight gain in 
accuracy as well. 

ORIGINAL TENDENCIES AS MEANS : SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 

If there were in human nature an original tendency to act 
out in conduct any idea present in consciousness, an easy and 
universal means to moral improvement would be to inoculate 
the mind with jdeas of good acts. If all motor representations 
tend to realize themselves in movement the most remunerative 
form of education for skill and morals is to fill the mind with 
representations of the desirable movements. 

Many thinkers about moral education have assumed the 
truth of the ideo-motor theory and so have trusted that pre- 
senting stories of noble acts was such a universal means of 
ennobling conduct. For example, Thomas says that "An idea 
. . . always implies, in different degrees, an activity which 
tends to spread, a power which tends to pass into action and 
cause bodily movement. . . . To think of play or of study is 
truly for them (children) to play and to study." ['07, p. 5 f.] 
Sisson notes that the child "has a distinct tendency to do what 

*In an investigation not yet reported in print. 
19 



290 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

he sees done, or hears about, or whatever in any way comes 
into the range of his perception. All these tendencies which 
are really summed up in the last sentence, constitute what is 
called suggestibility, or the tendency to repeat in one's own 
person any act the image of which enters the mind. The most 
clearly recognized form of this great tendency is, of course, 
imitation." ['10, p. 13 f.] 

The logical consequence of this doctrine is confidence that 
tales of heroism, thrift, sacrifice, studiousness and other virtu- 
ous deeds will tend to create them in the hearers — will surely 
create them except for the existence of ideas of contrary acts 
or strong contrary habits. So Thomas says : — 

"If the state of perfect monoideism could be realized, the 
execution of an act would always follow immediately the con- 
ception of it, and we have seen that such is frequently the case 
with children; but in the state of polyideism which is the mind's 
ordinary condition the case is different. Consciousness is the 
theatre of an incessant conflict which we take account of only 
at the moment of deliberation." ['07, p. 13] 

Keatinge writes to the same eft'ect : 

"A certain portion of the mental content is attended to and 
becomes the idea which fills the focus of consciousness. Sup- 
pose it to be the idea of giving the whole of one's property for 
charitable purposes. As an idea this possesses the constant 
energy of all ideas in the tendency to realize itself. But the 
field is not clear for it. It is obstructed (a) by the inherited 
impulses and tendencies of self-protection, which incline one 
to make certain that one's own welfare is assured; (b) by the 
impulses arising from habit, which look askance at the tendency 
to give more than the small portion of income which is usually 
assigned to charity ; (c) by a number of family prudential ideas, 
such as the duty of educating one's children or of assisting 
poor relatives; (d) by the fear that indiscriminate charity 
may do harm. As a result the incipient tendency to the 
renunciation of worldly goods is strangled at birth, and its only 
contribution towards the mental system in which it occurs is 
that of initiating a train of association. On the other hand 
(a) I may be the possessor of professional skill which enables 
me to earn my livelihood with ease, and may therefore be in 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 2gi 

no fear of indigence; (b) I may have inherited the fortune 
suddenly and therefore may have no estabhshed habits of deal- 
ing with money on a large scale; (c) I may dislike my children 
and my relatives; (d) I may be ignorant of the economics of 
social life. In this case the idea will be operative, and yet It 
is ex hypothesi the same idea as in the former case; the same 
impulse to give combined with the same conception of suffering, 
and the same anticipation of the pleasure to be derived from 
munificence to others. Stated schematically, an idea A intro- 
duced into a mental system has a tendency by association to 
call up other ideas and impulses, B, C, D, which may be (i) 
contrariant, critical, and inhibitory; (2) sympathetic and 
furthering. This is its total association value, and it works 
equally in all directions ; it calls up ideas that are friendly to 
it and also ideas that are hostile. This enumeration does not 
exhaust its latent powers. It possesses also a suggestive energy 
which may he converted into suggestive force, and zvhich 
overcomes or avoids the resistance offered to it so that action 
results* 

"These two qualities of an idea must be clearly distin- 
guished. The associative tendency is not necessarily a tendency 
to action or belief. I may mass together a number of ideas 
that deal with a certain line of conduct, but the result may be 
no more than a clear understanding of the positions ; for in- 
creased insight by no micans leads to action if there is in ex- 
istence a system of opposed ideas and impulses, and such a 
system is often called into existence in proportion to the size 
of the favoring system; while, on the other hand, an idea in 
so far as it is suggestive tends to realize itself quite apart from 
insight or understanding." ['07, p. 30 f.] 

This confidence that an idea will be realized in behavior if 
only we can get it into the mind and keep the opposite ideas 
out, has as its consequence, in turn, the expectation of vast 
moral improvement from the study of literary descriptions of 
virtue, the subservience of the scientific and practical aims to 
the moral aim in the teaching of history, and in the end the 
deliberate insertion in the curriculum of subject-matter chosen 
because it gives impressive ideas of good acts and so, sup- 
posedly, creates them. 

*Italics not in the original. 



292 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

It is, however, obvious to sagacious observers that ideas of 
good acts do not always, or even perhaps often, create good 
acts in this easy way, and that the effect in any case varies 
greatly with the individual and with the sources of the idea. 
So the very moralist who has boldly proclaimed that ideo-motor 
action is a fundamental law of conduct, may accept none of its 
logical consequences. Mr. Keatinge, for example, though 
specially interested in ideo-motor action, imitation, and sug- 
gestion, is compelled by his sense of fact to limit and encumber 
their action to such an extent that almost all of the practical 
advice given in his book, Suggestion in Education, might al- 
most, if not quite, as well have appeared under the title Habit- 
Formation in Education, or even The Falsity of the Ideo-motor 
Theory. 

The whole practice of Sug'gestion, in medicine, government 
and business as well as in teaching, is, indeed, a mixture of 
wise action, based on certain undoubted powers of ideas to 
produce effects in behavior and of more or less crass charla- 
tanism. The same theory of ideo-motor action that is re- 
quired for the former apparently can be used to justify the 
latter. 

It is, of course, my contention that the theory itself is 
v^rong — that an idea does not evoke the act which is like it, but 
the act which has followed it without annoyance — that success- 
ful suggestion toward an act consists in arousing, not the state 
of mind which is like that act, but the one which that act follows 
by instinct or habit, and in preventing from being aroused the 
state of mind or body which some contrary act so follows. If, 
whenever John Smith thought of running away howling, he 
did in fact stay and confront the foe, a most potent suggestion 
to courage would be to get him to think of himself as running 
away and howling. 

Everyone admits that in a vague sense suggestion may be 
potent. What is needed is some principle that will distinguish 
between its successes and its failures, between its scientific use 
and imposture. The ideo-motor principle in its stock state- 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 293 

ments does not, the result being- that efficiency in the use of 
suggestion either is falsely expected to result in cases where it 
can be proved not to do so, or is left dependent on an unpre- 
dictable combination of prestige, personal magnetism, rare skill 
and intuition born of experience. 

i If the doctrine of this book is true, suggestion will succeed 
in so far as it is a process of manipulating a person's ideas and 
attitudes so as to get him into a situation to which the desired 
response rather than another is connected by the laws of instinct, 
exercise and effect. It will fail in so far as it pretends to do 
anything more than this. An examination of the successes and 
failures of suggestion to see whether they do, in fact, follow 
this rule would be instructive, but I have found so great diffi- 
culty in getting the necessary data that I shall not attempt it. 

ORIGINAL VERSUS 'nATURAL' TENDENCIES 

The so-called 'naiuraV proclivities of man represent enor- 
mous changes from his original proclivities. The effects of 
learning are as surely present in the common liking of boys for 
hunting, fishing, adventure and sport in the present senses of 
those words, as in their rare liking for geometry, computation 
and grammatical precision. Original nature knows nothing 
of guns, fishhooks, rods and reels, canoes, tennis or foot-balls. 
Its tendencies may go so far as to specially enjoy throwing a 
small heavy thing held in the hand, and swinging a club-like 
thing held by one end, but the majority of the so-called 'natural' 
interests are largely acquired. 

The doctrine that the 'natural' is the good, and should be 
the aim of education, is then very different from the doctrine 
that original nature is right. It is a shifting, indeterminate 
doctrine, meaning one thing in 5000 B. C, another thing today, 
and something else a generation hence. It amounts roughly 
to declaring that the mixed product of original nature and the 
unconscious tuition of common circumstances and customs has 
ultimate value. That is false. Equally false is the doctrine 
that the 'natural' is essentially evil. 



294 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

One unfortunate result of the use of 'natural' for a mixture 
of original and taught proclivities is to unduly discourage edu- 
cational and other social reforms. The original must be 
reckoned with ; if odious it must be got rid of against resistance. 
In so far as laziness, tyranny, prostitution, superstition and 
the like are consequences of original connections, the respective 
reforms are made hard. But much of the so-called 'natural' 
iniquity in man is produced by training, the only action needed 
for reform being to abolish the artificial stimuli to the evil 
behavior. Sacrifice of living men to idols, belief in the divine 
right of kings and legal ownership of human beings were 
natural enough in their day, but no special effort is required to 
keep the children of New York City from reverting to such 
beliefs and practices. 

The same argument holds for false expectations of stability 
in the case of 'natural' behavior that is useful. It is 'natural,' 
under certain conditions of American life, to expect and 
exercise a certain degree of freedom in speech and print, and 
to entrust the punishment of the burglar in one's house to the 
courts, but this naturalness has been earned by a laborious strug- 
gle in the past and is maintained against resistance. A pub- 
licist who relied upon either of these tendencies to the same 
extent that he relied on instinctive babbling or gregariousness 
would make an egregious blunder. 

The question as to just how much of any 'natural' behavior 
is really original is thus often of great practical moment. 
Today, theft is far the more 'natural,' but homicide is perhaps 
the more original, of the two crimes. War between govern- 
mental units is perhaps far less original than it has been thought 
to be. Natural as it is, the desire to get something for nothing, 
as in gambling, may be largely a product of training. Female 
devotion to cooking and sewing has been so natural as to be 
esteemed a divine ordinance, but its only original elements may 
be less enjoyment of hunting behavior and a keener enjoyment 
of seeing human beings comfortable. 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 295 

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ORIGINAL SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 

It should be clear from facts already stated that the original 
tendencies of certain states of affairs to satisfy or to annoy are 
among the most potent determinants of human behavior and of 
those changes in it which result from education. Satisfaction 
and discomfort are in fact the great educative forces. They 
are such originally, and become still more so by virtue of the 
fact that behavior which is accompanied or closely followed 
by them becomes itself satisfying or annoying as the case may 
be. They are of very great value in the control of human 
nature because they are the roots of the phenomena which we 
call interests, desires, wants and motives. 

The original tendencies whereby this satisfies and that 
annoys are thus the ultimate selective forces in human be- 
havior, providing the first rewards and punishments for edu- 
cation's use. From them, directly or indirectly, all later wants, 
interests and ideals derive their motive power. There is no 
other means of arousing zeal for a given course of thought or 
conduct than by connecting satisfaction with it ; the mind does 
not do something for nothing. 

The original satisfiers and annoyers show theinselves 
emphatically to any competent observer who divests his attitude 
of the prejudices due to his individual make-up, to the elaborate 
reconstruction of his own satisfiers and annoyers by the cir- 
cumstances of modern life and education, and to the abstract 
caricatures of man's wants which a too scholastic science has 
drawn. But such impartiality and sympathetic insight into 
fundamental human cravings are hard to attain. The quiet, 
peace-loving scholar is prone to regard the teasing and horse- 
play of youth as a profitless mania which a few words of advice 
should cure in all save the intellectually or morally perverse! 
The father, taught by school and shop to value only the products 
of activities, thinks he will satisfy his little son by nailing the 
boards, or filling the pail with sand, or sailing the boat, for 
him! The economist has counted on a man possessed by a 



296 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

single-hearted craving for food and shelter, and avoidance of 
pain and productive labor! Some moralists have discussed 
man as if he were a monomaniac seeking only sensory pleasures 
and avoiding only sensory pains ! Many metaphysicians have 
seemed to suppose that man's thinking was governed by a burn- 
ing annoyance at contradictory judgments. 

To free oneself from such prejudices and narrow inven- 
tories of man's original interests is the first step toward a 
reasonable use of them. The second is put the useful ones to 
work and guard against the dangerous ones. Thus the very 
little child's satisfactions at bringing things to the mother and 
at carrying through a project to wdiich original nature impels 
him are roots of cooperation and helpfulness and achievement. 
Thus, the satisfactions of sex indulgence or of absolute mastery 
over other human beings (as by position or wealth) are so 
potent and so disturbing to modern plans for man's welfare 
that chastity, equality and poverty should probably be the rule 
until the individual, by having been taught to find satisfaction 
in the welfare of others, the maintenance of an ideal self and 
the impersonal pleasures, has proved himself fit to use his body, 
position and wealth. 

The third element in rational use of nature's capital of 
motives is to exercise ingenuity in attaching and detaching sat- 
isfaction and discomfort to and from this and that particular 
situation or feature of a situation. The genius at human engi- 
neering will learn to apply these forces with a skill like that 
whereby the mechanical and chemical engineers use the forces 
of gravity and atomic affinities. The triumphs so possible are 
of course not for me to illustrate, but I may note two obvious 
principles. First, the satisfyingness of a state of affairs is not 
an abstractly, uniformly potent thing, but depends on the total 
behavior-series in which the state of affairs happens. A boy 
may like to be petted by his mother, but not in public ; he may 
like to work with tools when some special achievement has 
been suggested, but not when told, 'There are your tools ; play 
with them.' The second fact is that the states of affairs which 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 297 

are constituted by the approval, scorn, kindliness and anger 
and the like of other human beings may fail of efficacy because 
of even slight departures from the typical original form of the 
behavior in question. Thus a parent or teacher who is reserved 
and constrained may, though sincerely approving, have the 
effect of indifference; on the other hand, a showy pretense at 
kindly interest is likely to be responded to as the meddling 
which it really is. Children must not be expected to be mind- 
readers, nor on the other hand should any one hope that the 
ostensible meaning of words will substitute for the subtle char- 
acteristics of bodily attitude, facial expression, and quality, of 
voice. 

Besides putting us in possession of control over the springs 
of conduct, recognition of the facts about satisfiers and annoy- 
ers serves to correct false views of the psychology and pedagogy 
of interest, especially the view that interest is nothing but the 
attitude of attentiveness and that the educational problem of 
interest is nothing more than that of getting attention to the 
right objects. 

This view is well illustrated by the following quotation 
from Professor Calkins' Introduction to Psychology, compris- 
ing all that she thinks it worth while to say about interest in 
the course of the five hundred pages. 

"The term attention is a psychological pseudonym of the 
expression 'interest.' To be attended to means precisely to be 
interesting. . . .Things which are naturally uninteresting, 
such as dull books or difficult problems, may, it is true, be 
attended to, but they grow interesting in the process ; for being 
interested and attending are one and the same experience. . . . 
In a strict and limited sense, the attended to or interesting is a 
relational experience. . . . 'Clear' and 'vivid' are other syno- 
nyms of attended to and interesting in this narrow use of the 
terhis. . . . Narrowness of the fact attended to is evidently a 
constant characteristic. . . . The term 'attention' is often used 
in a very broad way, to cover not only the attention feeling, 
clearness, but the characteristic results and accompaniments of 
the feeling. . . . From the practical point of view attention 
certainly is significant, not for what it is in itself, but because 



298 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

it is followed by memory and thought." ['01, pp. 137-146, 
passim'] The original interests are stated by this author to be: 
first, in 'the unusual' (including the intense), and second in 
'the instinctively interesting,' the latter being left undescribed 
save by the case (which seems better fitted to illustrate acquisi- 
tion than instinct) of Miss Calkins' interest in "the waves that 
are breaking on the shore" and her neighbors' interests in 
"tranquilly playing cards or making Battenberg lace." ['01, 
p. 139 f.] 

We must, it is true, allow psychologists the right so to 
restrict the meaning of the word interest if they choose; but, 
if they do so, they should give space and a name to the far 
more important fact, which interest has meant in common- 
sense usage, that certain sorts of behavior satisfy man — ^that 
is, are welcomed, and continued, and upon proper occasion 
readily repeated by him. The statement 'John is interested in 
music; James is not,' means more than that John listens atten- 
tively to music and is attentive to various requests to study 
music, and attends to the music he is told to study, while James 
does the opposite. It means, in addition and primarily, that 
John is satisfied by melodies and harmonies heard, scores 
seen, exercises practiced, musical ability attained and the like, 
as James is not; and that from identical external stimuli 
equally attended to, different results accrue in the two boys. 
The difference in attention is only one of many symptoms and 
results of this difference in satisfyingness. Miss Calkins' 
superior interest in the forces, moods and beauties of nature is, 
I venture to instruct her, more than her tendency to attend to 
natural objects and leave unnoticed the needles and threads, 
aces and ten-spots. It is a tendency to be satisfied by states of 
affairs which bore her neighbors. The instructive element of 
her interest in the waves that are breaking on the shore is the 
moving force which makes her attend now and in the future, 
and also in many other ways respond to them. This moving 
force is the readiness of certain neurones to act, manifested as 
the satisfyingness of certain states of affairs to her. 

The educational doctrine of interest, then, should take 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 299 

account of all the consequences of the satisfiers and annoyers. 
Their tendency to strengthen and weaken permanently the con- 
nections which they accompany or closely follow, whatever 
these be, is indeed much more important than their tendency to 
predispose toward attention to, and neglect of, certain objects 
and events. The latter is simply one special case of the former. 
What a man attends to is a matter of instincts and habits, like 
any other instincts and habits, modified like them in accord 
with the law of effect. The tendencies to be satisfied and 
annoyed which determine the lines of force of the law of effect, 
are prime determiners of man's intellect and character. Com- 
mon sense calls them his 'wants' or 'interests,' and they may 
well retain that name. 

Since the original satisfiers and annoyers for man as a 
species are the fundamental moving force in the common fea- 
tures of man's learning, the individual differences in their 
strength which characterize men singly may be expected to be 
fundamental causes of the differences among individuals in 
intellect, character and achievement. What little is known 
concerning individual differences and their causes justifies this 
expectation. Thus the original satisfyingness of manipulation 
of things and of 'experimentation' with them — that is, doing 
something to things and having them do something as a result 
— is relatively stronger in boy- than in girl-babies, whereas the 
original satisfyingness of gregariousness, attentiveness to hu- 
man faces and voices, being approved and affectionately treated, 
and the like, is relatively stronger in girl- than in boy-babies.* 

This difference between the sexes seems to play a large 
part in determining even so remote and artificial a matter as 
the choices of high school and college electives, boys showmg 
a relatively stronger interest in the physical sciences and girls 

*I use the words 'relatively stronger' here with the meaning that (A 
in boys) — (B in boys) is greater than (A in girls) — (B in girls), where 
A=the strength of the manipulation-experimentation interest and B=the 
strength of the gregarious-human emotional expression-affection interest. 
It is probably also true that (A in boys)>(A in girls and that (B in 
boysX(B in girls), though that is not required for our argument. 



300 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

in literature and psychology. The same difference within 
either sex seems also to be an effective determiner of achieve- 
ment, though we have here no data earlier than the elementary- 
school age. By that age, and probably in infancy as well, the 
kind of man who is to become an eminent mechanical engineer 
shows notably differences from the man who is to become an 
eminent lawyer, in respect to the relative strength of these two 
satisfaction groups which we may call for short, the 'thing- 
action' and the 'human-feeling' interests. Kent ['03, p. 62] 
found the order of certain interests at the elementary-school 
period reported by two such groups to be as follows : 

Boyhood Interests of Engineers and Lawyers 

Engineers Lawyers 

I . 2. 3. 4- 5- I- 2. 3. 4. 5. 

Science 

Arithmetic 

Geography 

History 

Literature 

The numbers i, 2, 3, 4, 5, at the top refer to the order of interest. The 
numbers beneath give the number of men reporting each subject as of the 
given degree of interest. Thus, of 82 engineers who mentioned science, 
36 put it as the most interesting study of the five during their boyhood ; 
while not one puts it as the least interesting. 

Another instructive illustration of the significance of indi- 
vidual differences in being satisfied and annoyed is found in 
the general torpor and lack of zeal of the feeble-minded with 
respect to mental play, even when it is adapted to their degree 
of capacity. They do not learn, partly because they are not 
satisfied by new sensations, by doing something to have some- 
thing happen, and by mental life for its own sake; and are not 
annoyed by monotony, vacuity, and failure. The apathetic 
ones often do not even care enough to play, while the active 
ones play at stereotyped animal-like occupations in which a 
gifted child could not engage without enlivening them by some 
intellectual artifice. It is not essentially false to say that the 



36 


37 


8 


I 











II 


33 


33 


49 


19 


II 


6 


6 


2.2 


II 


22 





44 


10 


14 


28 


17 


10 


, 


II 


44 


ZZ 





4 


8 


24 


36 


14 


56 


II 


II 


1 1 





I 


6 


7 


15 


49 


II 


56 





II 






THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 3OI 

stupid person zvants to be stupid. A convenient means of 
estimating- the significance of satisfaction in mental activity for 
achievement is to read Dr. Kuhlmann's account of his ex- 
periences in teaching some feeble-minded boys to play dominoes. 
['04, pp. 394-402] 

I quote typical statements : — "A, eleven years ... a mid- 
dle-grade imbecile. ... In general he showed little interest 
in the game, none apparently, except in the mere stringing of 
blocks into a line, possibly some in matching, and most in his 
recognition of his having won." (This, here and later, was 
probably due to the notice and approving looks thereby got). 
. . . "B . . . fourteen years nine months . , . above A in 
general ability . . . but would come under the imbecile grade. 
. . . His interest seemed, too, to be in stringing out a line of 
blocks, perhaps some in matching, but most in winning. . . . 
D . . . ten years and four months . . . above the imbecile 
grade . . . had no difficulty in learning to play the domino 
game. . . . He showed considerable interest in winning. . . . 
E . . . twelve years ten months old . . . above the imbecile 
grade. In learning the domino game he showed no appreciable 
difference . . . from B. . . . F, eight years seven months old 
... of the active type. . . . To go through the regular pro- 
cedure of a domino game proved to be beyond F's attainments ; 
not perhaps because he did not understand the game, for occa- 
sional evidence showed that he probably understood as well as 
any of the other cases. ... As a rule he showed no interest 
in either the procedure or in winning, yet a few times he ap- 
plauded loudly when he won and got angry when his opponent 
won several times in succession." 

THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF PLASTICITY 

Modern educational philosophers have emphasized the value 
of what they call the 'plasticity' of man in contrast to the 
stereotyped and rigid behavior of the lower animals. That 
the possibilities of education for him are so far beyond those 
for the other animals, is due, they say, to his being 'plastic' 
for so much longer a time, in so much larger a proportion of 
his behavior, and so much more fully in each feature of it. 

This doctrine is harmless, though also helpless, so long as it 



302 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

is taken to mean only the obvious facts that man does change 
at a rapid rate in each of many traits, and continues to change 
rapidly for many years. But one of two very misleading 
meanings is likely to be in the theory in the minds of those 
holding it, or at least to result in the minds of readers of their 
expositions of it. Either the 'plasticity' of man is thought of 
vaguely as a power possessed by him whereby he fits himself 
to live and thrive in any environment, or it is thought of as the 
absence of tendencies to respond to particular situations, each 
in a definite way. Plasticity in the first sense of a magic 
potency to get along with anything would doubtless be valuable 
to have, but does not exist. In the second sense of the mere 
absence of definite tendencies to response it would not produce 
the superior educability of man or anything else of value.* 

It must be confessed that the standard expressions of the 
doctrine of plasticity lend support to these two errors. John 
Fiske says, in an often quoted passage : 

"But this steady increase in intelligence, as our forefathers 
began to become human, carried with it a steady prolongation 
of infancy. As mental life became more complex and various, 
as the things to be learned kept ever multiplying, less and less 
could be done before birth, more and more must be left to be 
done in the earlier years of life. So instead of being born with 
a few capacities thoroughly organized, man came at last to be 
born with the germs of many complex capacities which were 
reserved to be unfolded and enhanced or checked and stifled 
by the incidents of personal experience in each individual. In 
this simple yet wonderful way there has been provided for man 
a long period during which his mind is plastic and malleable, 
and the length of the period has increased with civilization until 

*There is also the argument from adaptation that if the young are 
helpless, the parents must needs be specially sagacious in order to keep 
them alive. Such is apparently Chamberlain's notion when he writes that 
"A comparatively witless infancy must augur the high intellectual achieve- 
ments of the men and women of the race." ['oo, p. 3.] This is. of 
course, only hypothetical in any case, and is proved false by the case of 
the kangaroo and opossum. Helplessness in the young can be prevented 
from causing their elimination by many other means than great intel- 
ligence in their parents. 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 3^3 

it now covers nearly one third of our lives. It is not that our 
inherited tendencies and adaptations are not still the main thing. 
It is only that we have at last acquired great power to modify 
them by training so that progress may go on with ever increas- 
ing sureness and rapidity." ['83, p. 315 f.] 

The third sentence has, and perhaps fairly, been interpreted 
in just these objectionable ways. 

James, writing of the genesis of human reasoning, contrasts 
man with the lower animals as follows : — 

"In them [the lower animals] fixed habit is the essential 
and characteristic law of nervous action. The brain grows to 
the exact modes in w-hich it has been exercised, and the inheri- 
tance of these modes would have in it nothing surprising. But 
in man the negation of all fixed modes is the essential char- 
acteristic. He owes his whole preeminence as a reasoner, his 
whole human quality of intellect, we may say, to the facility 
with which a given mode of thought in him may suddenly be 
broken up into elements which recombine anew. Only at the 
price of inheriting no settled instinctive tendencies is he able to 
settle every novel case by the fresh discovery by his reason of 
novel principles. ['93, vol. 2, p. 367 f.] 

This, especially the last sentence, is an unfortunate state- 
ment. James' contrary general doctrine that man has more 
instincts than any of the lower animals and that their elaborate 
interactions are the stimuli to his intelligent procedure is to be 
preferred to it. Here he apparently accepts the notion of in- 
stincts — as hard and fast tendencies, irrevocably 'fixed' and 
'settled' in 'exact modes' — which he later so effectively demol- 
ishes. A mind given up to such might well be incapable of 
wide and rapid learning. But a mind equipped with many 
instincts such as nature really shows and such as James himself 
describes, may be all the more capable of wide and rapid learn- 
ing. The facility with which a given mode of behavior "may 
suddenly be broken up into elements" is indeed in part depen- 
dent upon the number of the original behavior-series into which 
it enters. This, also, James elsewhere shows. 



304 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Henderson makes still clearer the view of plasticity which 
I am questioning. He says : 

"Given such a system [the connection system of the human 
brain] and the readiness of learning depends on the absence 
therein of preferential associations between stimuli and re- 
sponses. Wherever owing to heredity or training such prefer- 
ential associations exist, there the power to utilize other than 
the associated responses is in part interfered with, and rendered 
slow or difficult. Heredity, therefore, endows one with the 
capacity to learn by the gift of a central nervous system with 
which all parts of the sensory and motor apparatus are closely 
connected, and in which the preferential associations tend to be 
few or feeble and the amount of diffusion in nervous currents 
correspondingly great." ['10, p. 90 f.] 

Attributing man's greater ease and wider range and longer 
maintenance of modifiability or adaptability to an undefined 
'plasticity' is simply one more case of leaving a tendency unde- 
scribed save by its results, and so encouraging the imputation 
of miraculous powers to it. What both insight into and con- 
trol over human nature require is a statement of just what 
original connections — or what features of them — man has that 
the lower animals lack, or lacks that the lower animals have, 
which make him learn so much more than they do. 

The notion that a mere lack of definite connections between 
situations and responses gives man his advantage in a rapidly 
changing and complex world seems plausible, but is thoroughly 
unsound. Its argument runs as follows : — By having no one 
response Ri connected with a situation Si man is able to make 
in succession many responses Ri, R2, R3, R4, R5, etc. In a 
changing environment, proffering to each generation new situa- 
tions and requiring from each generation different responses 
from those which sufficed its ancestors, a hundred responses, 
each connected to nothing in particular, are thus better than 
hundreds each with its preferential attachment to some one 
situation. It is unsound because, first, not having Ri con- 
nected with Si gives no increased likelihood of responding 
thereto by R2, R3, R*, etc. Not sneezing when one's nose is 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES ' S^S 

irritated would, per se, add not a jot or tittle to the probability 
that one will blow his nose or go to a physician. If the con- 
nection with sneezing' does prevent those other connections, 
it is by removing the irritation; if the annoying situation per- 
sists after the sneezing response, it is just as likely to produce 
diffusion into other responses if there has been, as if there has 
not been, a definite prior response. Further, that a hundred 
responses are each connected with nothing in particular does not 
mean that each is connected to everything in general. It could 
mean only that they were not connected with anything at all, and 
so could not be made at all. Any connection has to be zvith some- 
thing in particular. Multiple response to a single situation 
occurs, not because no response is connected with it, but because 
many are, each according to some variation in it, such as its 
continuance after the preferred response to it has been made. 
Nor would there be any advantage in having a set of responses 
to one situation-group made in a random order rather than in 
always beginning with some one of them. 

The real facts for which plasticity is a possible name are 
not negative but positive^ — not the poverty of man's unlearned 
connections, but their richness. Notable are the connections 
described under manipulation, vocalization, visual exploration, 
curiosity, mental control, the responses to approval and disap- 
proval, the satisfyingness of forming and using secondary con- 
nections, and, of course, the strengthening- of connections by 
the satisfyingness and annoyingness of their accompaniments 
and sequents. It is because man has these tendencies to an 
extent and degree unknown in the lower animals that he learns 
so much more, and so much more quickly, than they. 

The instincts of theirs which he lacks and the 'imperfection' 
in him of instincts which are 'perfect' in them are not causes 
of his superiority. On the contrary, it is the instincts of his 
which they lack and the 'imperfection' in them of instincts which 
are more nearly 'perfect' in him which cause their inferiority. 



20 



306 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

WHICH INSTINCTS ARE OF MOST WORTH? 

The more specific tendencies — such as to walk, run or climb, 
to go to sleep under cover, to pursue, catch and dismember 
small objects, to fear loud noises and the dark, to attack him 
who takes away one's possessions, and to show off before the 
opposite sex — ^may be put in one group and compared with the 
more general tendencies — such as curiosity, manipulation, 
vocalization, being- satisfied by mental control or 'being a cause,' 
and the instincts of multiform physical and mental activity. 

The more 'emotional' tendencies — such as to be loving, 
frightened, angry, amorous, disgusted or elated — may be com- 
pared with the more 'intellectual' tendencies — such as curiosity, 
visual exploration or multiform mental activity. 

The more ancient tendencies, which hark back to prehuman 
times — such as climbing, rivalry for food and mates, fear of 
sudden loud noises — may be compared with the tendencies that 
have been born lately, since man became differentiated from 
the other primates. 

In the way in which the cjuestion of worth in human struc- 
ture or behavior is usually interpreted, there is roughly a 
balance — and a large one — in favor of the more general, more 
inteUectiial and more modern instincts. If we list the features 
of life which are the greatest means of human welfare — of 
health, industry, knowledge and justice — and note their more 
obvious sources in original nature, we are led to the instincts of 
curiosity, manipulation, mental control and multiform mental 
activity, in which reason begins to experiment freely with the 
facts of nature. In a world in which man makes his foods and 
drugs and measures their specific virtues to a calorie, the orig- 
inal food preferences and avoidances seem, and are, rather 
trivial means of protection. Where there are so many interest- 
ing occupations that serve man's good, where the killing of one 
fox costs the food of a man for a week, the interest in general 
manipulative play far outranks the hunting instinct. There is 
no longer any wisdom in submitting to big and domineering 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 3^7 

men, loving- pink-cheeked maidens, and hating those who med- 
dle with us, that can compare with the wisdom of impersonal 
inquiry into the facts of life and their effect on human welfare. 

It is of course true, with behavior as with structure, that 
the question of what is worth most requires qualification. That 
a brain, in the common interpretation of the question, is worth 
more for human welfare than a liver, does not deny that man's 
body would be equally valueless whether his brain or his liver 
were extirpated. Similarly to assert that general manipulation 
is worth more than breathing or swallowing does not deny that 
the former would be worth nothing to a man dead because 
lacking the instincts to breathe and swallow. The meaning 
attached to 'worth' in the comparison of indispensables is of 
course complex, and provocative of casuistic and evasive argu- 
mentation. I have trusted, and shall trust, the reader to keep 
in mind the qualifications and conditions without which such 
comparisons are meaningless. 

Keeping them in mind, the law of effect — that is, the in- 
stinct of the neurones to preserve those connections by which 
neurones 'ready to conduct' are stimulated and to lose those by 
which neurones 'unready to conduct' are stimulated — and the 
instincts of multiform physical and mental activity, including 
curiosity, visual exploration, manipulation, vocalization and 
satisfaction at mental control or 'doing something and having 
something happen thereby,' are on a plane of worth far above 
the rest of man's equipment. Of these, the tendencies to make 
and enjoy making secondary connections beyond the direct 
bonds between sensed situation and immediate motor response 
to it are, by the same token, of the most worth. Those con- 
nections in which the sensory situation is replaced by an ab- 
stract plan, and the immediate muscular response by a con- 
templated action, 'tried out' in thought only, will, in the long 
run, do most for satisfying human wants. For, first, each can 
do the work of thousands of gross concrete behavior-series, 
providing for situations before they are met, for elements of 
situations never encountered by themselves, and for groups of 



308 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

situations whose essential similarity the more animal-like con- 
nections could never reveal. In the second place, these ten- 
dencies to secondary, or so-called 'higher,' connections may rise 
free from the appetites of the single creature who exercises 
them and deal with the world in the interest of all men. Work 
and play with 'ideas' of apples, blows, headaches, friendship, 
war, marriage, child-birth and family can be impersonal and 
)/ ideal to an extent and a degree that would never be attained 
by direct responses to the concrete situations themselves. So, 
by his peculiar tendencies to go beyond these and to enjoy 
mental activity in general, man is becoming able to guide the 
melee of personal loves, hates, jealousies, rivalries, seizings, 
holdings, fightings, masterings and submittings by that im- 
partial judgment of their effects which makes truth and that 
impartial judgment of their worth which makes justice. 

Two different decisions as to the relative worth of the 
elements of man's original nature should be noted, of which 
one flatly opposes the answer given here, while the other gives 
our answer, but for a very different reason. 

The former asserts that the more emotional instincts should 
outrank the more intellectual ones; and the older, the more 
recent. This view is cherished in one or another modified form 
by very many reactionaries who distrust the rationalization or 
intellectual control of human affairs ; and by a few men of 
genius who believe that such control must, in the nature of 
things, be superficial and unsafe. Of the latter Stanley Hall 
has given the most vigorous exposition of the view that man's 
loves, fears, hates, disgusts and other direct and vehement 
behavior toward things and men should be the primary objects 
of education. If they are well managed, he thinks, the instincts 
productive of the arts and sciences can safely be left to them- 
selves, while, if man goes astray in respect to any of these 
primitive appetites, his whole makeup may twist like a bad tool 
or rot like a bad apple. 

Such a view is useful as a warning against the neglect of 
the less intellectual instincts, and against mistaken confidence 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 3O9 

that superficial habits of thought will work back transformingly 
upon the deeper strata of feeling and action, but it does not 
weaken the force of the facts in favor of the importance, in life 
and in education, of the instincts which lead to thought, art, 
and science. It is precisely by the products of the intellectual 
instincts that the more vehement feeling instincts can be guided 
aright. 'To love aright,' says Hall, 'is the beginning of wis- 
dom' ; but to learn to love aright is possible only by ideal con- 
trols. What will attract sexually is in any case a result in 
large measure of circumstances ; the question is whether there 
shall be, among these circumstances, ideals of health, mental 
and moral vigor and fitness for parenthood, preformed by the 
right direction of the intellectual instincts. Finding that the 
original maternal instinct is important and needs to be cherished 
and redirected in the midst of forces that threaten to prevent 
its exercise. Hall himself turns at once for aid to the instincts 
of general mental activity, trying to direct them to the study 
of children, of the value of mothering behavior to the mother 
as well as the child, and the like. He does not in practice be- 
lieve that either stupidity or emotionality makes a good mother. 

The danger of over-dignifying the early and emotional in- 
stincts is, first, that of encouraging the general laissez-faire of 
the 'nature is right' doctrine, and, in the second place, of 
laboriously trying to make much out of tendencies which have 
little in them for education in the world of today. We should, 
of course, make as much as we can out of everything in man's 
equipment; but we had best realize once for all that pouncing 
upon and wrestling, playing in cave-like places, hunting birds' 
eggs, returning a blow, fearing thunder, pitying men with 
sores, and the like are trivialities for education and life com- 
pared with instinctive manipulation of objects in general and 
delight in thought for thought's sake. 

Such an attack upon the intellectual instincts as Stanley 
Hall's is, to my mind, less objectionable than the defense of 
pure thought with a capital T by absolutist philosophers, on the 
ground that it is above nature in its origin, and apart from 



3IO THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ordinary human wants in its functions. If the intellect's only 
merit consisted in transcending nature — in serving the interests 
of some super-human truth — in being above coming and go- 
ing, getting and having, loving and hating, and other concrete 
appearances of man's impulsive struggle for life and satisfac- 
tion — ^we might well prefer to trust to the direct motor responses 
of men to work out human salvation by trial, error, and chance 
success. Intellect is not dignified by denying its natural origin 
or by removing it beyond usefulness to the crudest and trivialest 
of the wants of living men. But the worth or worthlessness 
of such a monstrosity need not be argued ; for it nowhere exists. 
Intellect is of the same flesh and blood with all the instincts, a 
brother whose superiority lies in his power to appreciate, har- 
monize, use and save them all. 

Its ideals are kith and kin of man's original hungers and 
thirsts and cravings. "What are ideals about ?" asks Santayana 
with customary insight, "what do they idealize except natural 
existence and natural passions? That would be a miserable 
and superfluous ideal indeed that was nobody's ideal of nothing. 
The pertinence of ideals binds them to nature, and it is only 
the worst and flimsiest ideals, the ideals of a sick soul, that 
elude nature's limits, and belie her potentialities. Ideals are 
forerunners or heralds of nature's successes, not always fol- 
lowed, indeed, by their fulfilment, for nature is but nature and 
has to feel her way; but they are an earnest, at least, of an 
achieved organization, an incipient accomplishment, that tends 
to maintain and root itself in the world." ['05, vol. i, p. 282] 

ORIGINAL NATURE THE ULTIMATE SOURCE OF ALL VALUES 

I have been at some pains to make it clear that the instinc- 
tive tendencies of man must often be supplemented, redirected 
and even reversed, and that, in the ordinary sense of the words, 
original nature is imperfect and untrustworthy. But in a cer- 
tain important sense nature is right. 

There is a warfare of man's ideals with his original tend- 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 3II 

encies, but his ideals themselves came at some time from original 
yearnings in some man. Learning has to remake unlearned 
tendencies for the better, but the capacity to learn, too, is a part 
of his nature. Intelligence and reason are fit rulers of man's 
instincts just because they are of the same flesh and blood. 
They are not foreign conquerors, imposing a law that is better 
because it comes down from above. They are sons of the soil, 
as indigenous as hunger and thirst, chosen to rule because their 
laws mean the best harmony of all the instincts. The native 
impulses and cravings of man have to be tamed and enlightened 
by the customs, arts and sciences of civilized life, but every 
item of these arts and sciences v/as first created by forces within 
man's own nature. Instincts may be trusted to form desirable 
habits only under a strong social pressure whereby the wants of 
one are accommodated to the wants of all, but the most elab- 
orate and artificial moral training which a social group pre- 
scribes is still ultimately an expression of man's nature. The 
springs of ideals and of work in their service are surely not 
in the environment of rocks, rivers, animals and plants. Man's 
nature is right in at least the sense that it, not the world out- 
side of it, is the source of whatever goods man has learned to 
esteem. 

The impersonal wants, the cravings for truth, beauty and 
justice, the zeal for competence in workmanship, and the spirit 
of good will toward men which are the highest objects of life 
for man seem far remioved from his original proclivities. They 
are remote in the sense that the forces in their favor have to 
work diligently and ingeniously in order to make them even 
partial aims for even a minority of men. But, in a deeper 
sense, they reside within man himself; and, apart from super- 
natural aids, the forces in their favor are simply all the good in 
all men. 

The original nature of man, as we have seen, has its source 
far back of reason and morality in the interplay of brute forces ; 
it grows up as an agency to keep men, and especially certain 
neurones within men's bodies, alive; it is physiologically de- 



312 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

termined by the character of the synaptic bonds and degrees of 
readiness to act of these neurones; parts of it are again and 
again in rebelHon against the higher hfe that the acquired wis- 
dom of man prescribes. But it has evolved reason and morahty 
from brute force; amongst the neurones whose hfe it serves 
are neurones whose Hfe means, if a certain social environment 
is provided, loving children, being just to all men, seeking the 
truth, and every other activity that man honors ; the wisdom 
that criticizes it is its own product ; the higher life is the choice 
of its better elements : for whatever aberrations and degrada- 
tions it imposes on man, its own virtues are the preventive and 
cure: and to it will be due whatever happiness, power and 
dignity man attains. 

"Human nature, then, has for its core the substance of 
nature at large, and is one of its more complex formations. 
Its determination is progressive. It varies indefinitely in its 
historic manifestations and fades into what, as a matter of 
natural history, might no longer be termed human. At each 
moment it has its fixed and determined entelechy, the ideal of 
^ that being's life, based on his instincts, summed up in his char- 
acter, brought to a focus in his reflection, and shared by all who 
have attained or may inherit his organization. His perceptive 
and reasoning faculties are parts of human nature, as embodied 
in him; all objects of belief or desire, with all standards of 
justice and duty which he can possibly acknowledge, are trans- 
cripts of it, conditioned by it, and justifiable only as expressions 
of its inherent tendencies."* These inherent tendencies, too, 
bear the impetus and means to their own improvement. The 
apostles and soldiers of the ideal in whom service for truth and 
justice has become the law of life need not despair of human 
nature, nor pray for a miracle to purge man of his baser ele- 
ments. They are the sufficient miracle : their lives are the 
' proof that human nature itself can change itself for the better 
— that the human species can teach itself to think for truth 
alone and to act for the good of all men. 
*Santayana, Life of Reason, vol. i. p. 289 f. 



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313 " 



314 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

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3l6 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

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3i8 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



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.?NDEX 



320 



INDEX 



i 



Abnormal psychology, evidence from 
as a criterion of unlearnedness, 
23 

AcHER, R. A., 52,, 202, 27s 

Acquired tendencies, intermixture 
with original tendencies, 2 f., 39 
f. ; inheritance of, 230 ff. 

Acquisition, 51 f. 

Activity, general mental, 141 ff. ; 
general physical, 143 

Addition, effect of emulating an 
absolute standard on, 289 

Adornment, 140 

Affection, 81 ff. 

Allin, A., 163, 168, 169, 208, 275 

Anatomy of original tendencies, 209 
ff. 

Angell, J. R., 147, 179 

Anger, 76 ff. ; situations provoking, 
76; responses of, 76 ff. ; value of, 
283 ff. 

Animal psychology, as a source ot 
knowledge of original tendencies, 
38 

Animals, responses to, 52 f., 60 f. 

Annoyers, original, 123 ff. ; defined, 
123 f. ; listed, 124; explicable only 
by cerebral physiology, 125 ff. ; 
in relation to the laws of readi- 
ness and unreadiness, 127 ff. ; 
function of, in learning, 172 f . ; 
importance of, 295 f. ; relation of 
to doctrines of interest, 297 ff. ; 
relation of to individual differ- 
ences, 299 ft'. 

Anthropology as a source of knowl- 
edge of original tendencies, 27 f. 

Anxiety, confusion of with fear, 

57 f. 

Appetite, loss of in pity, 103 ^ 

Approval, responses to, 89 f. ; re- 
sponses by, 90 f. 

Archaic adaptations in original na- 
ture, 280 f. 

Aristotle, 164 

Arms, position of, in anger, 77 

Artistic instincts, 140 



Attack, 70, 92, 120 

Attention, 46 f. ; to human beings, 

88; and interest, 297 f. 
Attention-getting, 88 f. 
Authority, general misuse of, 105 
Avoiding, 54 

Babbling, 114, 135 

Baldwin, J. M., 147 

Barker, L. R, 211, 213, 214, 215 

Bashfulness, 94 f., 96 

Behavior, defined, 2; stages in the 
explanation of, 11 ff. See for 
specific forms of behavior, the 
specific tendencies in each case 

Bergson, H., 164, 167, 208 

Bio-genetic law, 254 

Biographies of infants, 27 f. 

Biting, 69,. 74, 77 

Boas, F., 241 

Bolton, F. E., 203 

Bonds, original, 6 ff. See also Orig- 
inal tendencies. 

BoRGQUiST, A., 208 

Breathing, in fear, 59; in anger, 76; 
in laughing, 160 f. 

Browne, C, quoted by Darwin, 77, 
161, 166 

Bryan, W. L., 261 

Bullying, 103 f., 275 f. 

BuRK, C. F., 54, 262 f. 

BuRK, F. L., 104, 229, 249, 273, 275 
f., 279 f. 

Calkins, M. W., 180, 297 f. 

Capacities, defined, 5 f. ; of sensi- 
tivity, 44 ff. ; of bodily control, 
47 ff-> 13s ff-; productive of learn- 
ing, 171 ff. ; for permanence of 
bonds, 193 f. See also Original 
tendencies. 

Catharsis, 275 ff. 

Cave-digging, 202 

Censuses of opinions in the study 
of behavior, 28 ft'. 

Chamberlain, A. F., 88, 302 

Chain-reactions, J26, 132 f. 



INDEX 



3*1 



Giildren, observations of original 

tendencies in, 27 f. 
Clasping, 81, 82 
Classification of original tendencies, 

205 ff. ; by their functions, 205 f . ; 

by their situations, 206 f . ; by their 

responses, 207 f. ; by their genesis, 

208 
Cleanliness, 139 
Clemens, S'. L., quoted, 71 flf. 
Clepsine, 239 
Climbing, 47 

Clinging, 47 f., 67, 81, 102 
Clutching, 50, 67, 81 
Collecting, 53 f. ; gradual rise of, 

262 f. ; persistence of, '^^ f. 
CoLviN, S. S., 147 
Combat in rivalry, 70 flf. See also 

Fighting. 
Combinations of original tendencies, 

10, 93 f., 19s f. 
Conduction, readiness for, 125 flf.; 

physiology of, 222 
Confession, 98 
Confinement, 55 
Congruity, Hobhouse's theory of, 

190 flf. 
CoNKLiN, quoted by Whitman, 239 
Connections. See Bonds. 
Connectors, 209 
Conscience, 202 
Consciousness, in angry behavior, 

78 flf.; original tendencies to, 170 f. 
Constructiveness, 138 f. 
Contempt, responses to, 89 f. 
Continuity of instincts, 237 flf. 
Control, instinct of mental, 141 flf. 
Convergence of stimuli, 216 f., 220 
CooLEY, C. H., 37, 91, 103, 113, 120 
Cooing, 81, 135 
Cooperation, 100 
Counter-attack, 69 
Courtship, yz, 97 f. 
Craig, W., 159 
Crepidula, 239 
Crouching, 59, 120 
Cruelty, 103 flf. 

21 



Crying, 74, 8r, 91, 102, 135 
Curiosity, 140 f. 

Darkness, and fear, 61 

Darwin, C, 49, 59, y6, 89, itb flf., 
166, 208 

Dawson, G. E., 250 

Dearborn, G. V. N., 27, 112 

Defects in original nature, 277 flf. 

Delayed original tendencies, physi- 
ology of, 228 f. ; order of appear- 
ance of, 245 flf. ; gradual waxing 
of, 260 flf. 

Destructiveness, 138 f. 

Dickens, quoted by Darwin, 78 

Discipline, in schools, 89 f. 

Discomfort. See Annoyers. 

Dislike, confusion of with fear, 58 

Display, 94. 95 f. 

Distance, original responses to, 50 

Distribution of stimuli, 216 f., 220 

Disuse, 172 

Domestic service, and gregarious- 
ness, 88 

Domesticity, 55 f. 

Donaldson, H. H., 229 

Dread, confusion of with fear, 57 

Duchenne, quoted by Darwin, 161 

Eating, 50 

Edinger, L., 213, 2i8 

Effect, law of, 172 f. 

Effectors, 209 

Elements of original tendencies, 
action of, 10, 145 f., 195 f. 

Emotional tendencies compared with 
intellectual in value, 306 flf. 

Emotions, original, 150 flf.; difficul- 
ties in identifying, 150 flf.; inter- 
nal bodily conditions accompany- 
ing, 151; as mean^ of connection 
and representation, 153 f. ; Mc- 
Dougall's inventory of, 154 flf. ; 
relation of to expressive move- 
ments, 157 flf. 

Emulation, 08 ff. 

Engineers, boyhood interests of, 300 



322 



INDEX 



Environment, cooperation of, with 
original nature, 2 f., 39 f. 

Envy, lOl 

Excess movements, 137 f. 

Exercise, law of, 171 f. 

Experimentation, instinct of, 142 

Expression, of emotions, 157 ff. ; 
supposed instinct of, 158 f. 

Eye-movements in visual explora- 
tion of objects, 135 ff. 

Eyes, covering in fear, 59; flashing 
in anger, 75, yy; lowering, 92, 95, 
96; sparkling in laughter, 162 

Faculties, alleged formation of con- 
nections by, 174 

Falling, responses to, 49 

Fashion, and approval, 90 

Fatigue, in relation to the principle 
of readiness, 127 f. 

Fear, 57 ff, ; ambiguity of, 57 f. ; 
responses in, 58 ff. ; situations 
provoking, 60 ff. ; specialization of 
original bonds in, 66 ff. ; gradual 
rise of, in chicks, 263 ; persistence 
of, 268 

Feeble-minded, lack of intellectual 
interests in, 300 f. 

Feeling-tone. See Satisfiers and 
Annoyers. 

Fighting instincts, 68 ff, ; variety of, 
68 ff. ; in relation to attempted 
mastery, 70 ff. ; in courtship, yj, ', 
in response to being thwarted, 73 
ff. ; value of, 274 f., 283 ff. 

Filial instincts, absence of, 85 

FisKE, J., 302 f. 

Flushing, 76 

Flynt, J„ 55 

Fondling, 81, 91 

Ford, J, L., 164 

FOREL, A,, 98 

Fragments of original tendencies, 
action of, 10, 145 f., 195 f. 

Fr.\nce, C J., 277 

Frowning, tj, 90 



G ALTON, F,, 87, 97 

Gambling, 294 

Gard, W. L„ 63 

General and specific original ten- 
dencies compared in value, 306 ff. 

Germ-plasm and original nature, 2, 
230 

Gesell, a. L., ioi 

Gilbert, J. A., 262 

Grasping, 50, 52, US 

Gratiolet, quoted by Darwin, ^^ 

Greed, 102 

Gregariousness, 85 ff. 

Gross, K., no, 142, 208 

GuiLLET, C., 249 f., 273, 280 

Habit-formation. See Learning. 

Habitation, 54 f. 

Haggerty, M. E., 117 

Hair, erection of, in fear, 59 

Hall, G. S., 28, 36, 37, 57, 61, 64, 
75, 7^^ 96, 103, 163, 168, 169, 199, 
200, 202, 206, 208. 229, 234, 235, 
250, 251 f,, 256, 257, 271, 272 f,, 
274, 27s, 276, 279, 308, 309 

Hall, W, S., 27, 63 

Head, turning in fear, 59, 67 ; cov- 
ering in fear, 59, 67; throwing 
back, 68; erection and protrusion 
of, 92; lowering, 92; averting in 
shyness, 95 

Heart-beat, in fear, 59 

Helpfulness, 106 

Henderson, E. N., 13, 304 

Hiding, 59, 67 

High places, responses to, 64 f. 

HiRN, Y., 140 

Hitting, 69, yz, 77 

Hoarding, 53 f. 

Hobhouse, L. T., 185, 189 

Holmes, S. J., 189 ff. 

Home, 55 ff. 

Homer, quoted by Darwin, 77, 166 

Homesickness, 56 f. 

Homicide, 294 

Hooper, quoted by Westermarck, 84 

Hooting, 90 



INDEX 



32.?, 



HowiTT, quoted by Westermarck, 83 
Hunting instinct, 52. 104, 120, 267 

Ideals, are products of original 

tendencies, 310 ff. 
Ideas, absent from original situa- 
tions and responses, 24 
Ideo-motor action, 176 flf. ; evidence 
against, i8r ff. ; and moral edu- 
cation, 289 fif. 
Imitation, 108 ff., 174 ff. ; varieties 
of, 108 f. ; absence of any general 
faculty of, 109 ff. ; of particular 
forms of behavior, 117 ff. ; alleged 
formation of connections by, 174 
ff. 
Immunization by early indulgence, 

27s ff. 
Imperfection of instincts, 48, 305 
Incubation, genesis of, 238 ff. 
Infallibility, doctrine of nature's, 

271 ff. 
Infants, responses to the instinctive 

behavior of, 81 ff. 
Inoculation, theory of preventive 

mental, 275 ff. 
Instinct, as a mythical faculty, ir, 13 
Instincts, defined, 5 f. ; stages in the 
description of, 11 ff. ; of self- 
preservation, 14 f. ; James' list of, 
17 ff. ; criteria of, 22 ff. ; imper- 
fection ufr^, 305 ; of food-get- 
ting, protection, flight and attack, 
SO ff. ; social, 81 ff. ; of being sat- 
isfied and annoyed, 123 ff. ; of 
vocalization, visual exploration 
and manipulation, 135 ff. ; of curi- 
osity and mental control, 140 ff. ; 
of play, 144 ff. ; of emotional con- 
ditions, 150 ff. ; of self-expression, 
158 f . ; productive of learning, 171 
ff. ; anatomy and physiology of, 
209 ff. ; source of, 230 ff. ; order 
and dates of, 245 ff. ; value and 
use of, 270 ff. ; number of, in rela- 
tion to plasticity, 303 ff. See 
also Original Tendencies. 



Intellect, selection for, 240 ff. 
Intellectual instincts, 135 ff., 306 ft'. 
Interest, educational problem of, 297 

ff. 
Interests, 123 ff., 264 ff. 
Interference, responses to, 68 f. 
Inventories of original tendencies, 

16 ff., 41 f. 

James, W., 16, 20, 21, 22, 24, 37, 51, 
52, 54, 61, 63, 6s, 68, 8s, 87. 94, 
139, 151, 176, 178, 180, 182 ff., 193, 
264 f., 266. 303 

Jealousy, loi 

Jennings, H. S., i8s f.. 187, 192 

Johnston, J. B., 217 

Jumping, 47, 64. 67 

Kant, E., i6s 

Kaylor, M. a., 202 

Ke.\tinge, M. W., 290 f., 292 

Kent, E. B., 300 

Keppel, F., 267 

Kicking. 69, 'jz, 77 

Kidd, D., 8s 

Kindliness, 102 ff. ; dangers in, 283 

ff. 
Kinnaman, a. J., 117 
KiRBY, T. H., 289 
Kirkpatrick, E. a., 2>7, 47, 60, 64, 

74, 83, 109, no, 116, 140, is8, 205 
Kline, L. W., 55, s6, 208, 277 
KoLLiKER, A., 210, 211, 213, 214 
Kropotkin, p. a., 106 
Kuhlmann, F., 301 

Lacy, quoted by Darwin, 78 

Ladd, G. T., 126, 151 

Lancaster, E. G., 29 ff. 

Language, original foundations of, 
136 

Laughter, 103, 120, 160 ff. 

Lawyers, boyhood interests of, 300 

Learning, original tendencies pro- . 
ductive of, 171 ff. ; limitations to, 
173 f. ; by imitation, 174 ff. ; by 
ideo-motor action, 176 ff. ; explan- 



3*4 



IKDEX 



ations of by the law of exercise 

alone, 185 ff. ; physiology of, 222 

ff. ; inheritance of, 230 f. 
Leisure classes and the instinctive 

craving for objective approval, go 
V. Lenhossek, M., 214, 223 
Lightning, and fear, 61 
LiNDLEY, E. H., 142 
Lips, retracted in anger, 78 

LOEB, J., 232 

Love between the sexes, 97 f. 

McDouGALL, W., 23, Z7, 61, 62, 6s, 
68, ^2), 86, 91, 95, 112, 116, 117, 
121, 154 fif., 176, 181, 283, 284 f. 

Manipulation, 135 ff. 

Marks, use of in schools, 286 ff. 

Marshall, A., 144 

Marshall, H. R., 140, 226, 240 

Mastery, 92 f. 

Maternal instinct, 81 ff. 

Medullation, and delayed instincts, 
229 

Memory, 192 ff. 

Meumann, E., 270 f. 

Migration, 55 ff. 

Miles, C, 61 

Modifiability. See Learning. 

Modifiability of neurones, 222 f. 

Moll, A., 98 

Moore, K. C, 27, 49, 63, 112, 115 

Moral education, 289 ff. 

Morality, selection for, 240 ff. 

Morgan, C. L., 190, 202, 204 

Mosso, A., 57 

Motherly behavior, 81 ff. 

Motives, original foundations of, 
123 ff. 

Motor ability, development of with 
age, 261 f. 

Mouth, opening in fear, 59; posi- 
tion of, in anger, 76; position of, 
in laughter, 160 f. 

Movements, original control of, 47 
ff. ; of neurones, 224 ff. 

Multiple response, 7 ff., 133 f., 137, 
146 ff. 



Mysophobia, specialization of, 139 

Natural selection, and the origin of 
instincts, 235 ff. ; and the order 
of appearance and disappearance 
of instincts, 253 f. 

Natural tendencies versus original 
tendencies, 293 

Nature's infallibility, doctrine of, 
271 ff. 

Nestling, 59, 67, 81, 97 

Neurasthenia, in relation to the 
principle of readiness, 128 

Neurones, action of in satisfying- 
ness and annoyingness, 125 ff. ; in 
emotional responses, 150 ff. ; struc- 
ture of, 209 ff. ; arrangement of, 
212 ff. ; action of in sensitivity 
and conductivity, 222; action of 
in learning, 222 ff. 

Noises, and fear, 62 

Nudging, 92 

Number of instincts in man, 303 f. 

Nursing, 81 f. 

Obstacles, responses to, 69 
Opposition, alleged instinct of, loi 
Ordahl, G., 70, 99, 100, 159 
Order of appearance of delayed 
original tendencies, 245 ff. ; of 
disappearance of transitory ten- 
dencies, 245 ff. 
Original tendencies, defined, I ff. ; 
names for, 5 f. ; components of, 
6 ff. ; action of, 9 ff. ; need of 
exact descriptions of, 16 ff. ; cri- 
teria for discovery of, 22 ff. ; 
sources of information, 27 ff. ; to 
sensitivity, 44 ff. ; to attentiveness, 
46 f. ; of gross bodily control, 47 
ff. ; of food-getting, 50 ff. ; to 
hunt, 52 f . ; to collect and hoard, 

53 f . ; to avoid, 54; to seek shelter, 

54 f . ; to be annoyed by confine- 
ment, 55 ; to migration and do- 
mesticity, 55 ff. ; to fear, 57 ff. ; 
to fighting, 68 ff. ; to anger, 76 



INDEX 



325 



flf. ; to respond to the behavior of 
other human beings, 81 ff. ; pro- 
ductive of so-called imitation. io3 
ff. ; to be satisfied and annoyed, 
123 flf. ; to vocalization, visual ex- 
ploration and manipulation, 135 
ff. ; to curiosity, and mental con- 
trol, 140 ff. ; to play, 144 ff. ; to 
random movements, 146 ff. ; to 
emotional states, 150 ff. ; to 
laughter, 160 ff. ; to consciousness, 
170 f. ; productive of learning, 171 
ff. ; productive of remembering, 
192 ff. ; the action of fragments 
and combinations of, 195 f. : in- 
dividual differences in, 197; mod- 
ifiability of, 197 f. ; scope of, 199 
ff. ; classification of, 205 ff. ; anat- 
omy and physiology of, 209 ff. ; 
source of, 230 ff. ; order and dates 
of, 245 ff. ; value and use of, 270 
ff. ; defects in, 277 ff. ; as ends, 
286 ff. ; as means, 289 ff. ; and 
natural tendencies, 293 f. ; number 
of in man, 303 ff. ; relative worth 
of, 306 ff. ; the ultimate source of 
all values, 310 ff. 
Ownership, 102 

Pain, irrational response to, 70; and 

annoy ingness, 124, 129 
Paleness, 59 
Paralysis, 59, TJ 
Paramecium, 12, 187 
Perez, B., 63, 74 
Permanence, of bonds, 193 f. 
Physiology, of original tendencies, 

222 ff. ; of delay and transitori- 

ness, 228 f. 

PiLLSBURY, W. P , 147 

Pity, 103 

Plasticity, significance of, 301 ff. 
Play, 144 ff. 

Pleasure, not synonymous with sat- 
isfy ingness, 124; at being a cause, 

143 
Pointing, 51 



Possession, 51 f., 102 

Pouncing, 52 

Preyer, W., 16, 27, 28, 63, III 

Protozoa, behavior of as key tc the 
action of the neurones m learn- 
ing, 224 f. 

Protrusion, of lips, 11 1; of tongue, 
112, 121 

Psychasthenia, in relation to the 
principle of readiness, 128 

Pugnacity. See Fighting. 

Pulling, 74, 97, 135 

Pushing, 69, ^z, 74, 135 

Questionnaires, use of in the study 
of original nature, 29 ff. 

Rage, 'jd ff. 

Random activity, 8 f. ; movements, 
137 f., 146 ff., 274 f. 

Ratzel, F., 83 

Reaching, 50 f. 

Reaction, varied. See Multiple re- 
sponse. 

Readiness, the principle of, 125 ff. 

Recapitulation theory, 245 ff. ; evi- 
dence for and against, 254 ff. 

Receptors, 209 

Recreation, gregariousness as an ele- 
ment in, 86 ff. 

Reflexes, defined, S f. ; samples of, 
16 

Rending, 52, 120 

Repulsion, 54 

Resolution, Jennings' law of, 186 f 

Responses, as components of origr 
inal tendencies, 6 ff. ; need 01 
exact description of, 20 ff. ; 
classifications of original ten- 
dencies by, 207 f. See also Mul- 
tiple response. For descriptions 
of specific responses see under 
the appropriate original ten- 
dency. 

Restraint, escape from, 68 f. 

Rivalry, 98 ff., 286 ff. 

Robinson, L., n, 48, 66, 203 



326 



INDEX 



RoYCE, J., lor, io8 
Running, 47, 52, 59, 67, 120 

Santayana, G., 309, 312 

Satisfiers, original, 123 ff. ; defined, 
123 f. ; listed, 124; explicable only 
by cerebral physiology, 125 ff. ; 
and the principles of readiness 
and unreadiness, 127 ff. ; function 
of, in learning, 172 f. ; importance 
of, 295 ff. ; relation to doctrines 
of interest, 297 ff. ; i-elation to in- 
dividual differences, 299 ff. 

Saunders, F. H., 103 

Schneider, G. H., 16, 52, 53, 78, 249, 
272, 273 

Schopenhauer, A., 165 

School work, and gregariousness, 
88; and the approval-scorn series, 
89 f. ; and rivalry, 286 ff. 

Scorn, responses to, 89 f. ; responses 
by, 90 f. 

Scott, quoted by Darwin, 77 

Scratching, 69, 77, 135 

Screaming, 59, 81 

Secretiveness, 98 

Selection, for intellectual and moral 
superiority, 240 ff. See also Nat- 
ural Selection. 

Selective fallacy in questionnaire 
reports, 33 ff. 

Self-consciousness, 96 f. 

Sensory capacities, 44 ff., 222 

Sex behavior, 97 f. 

Sex differences in mastery and sub- 
mission, 93 ; in interests, 299 f. 

Shakespeare, quoted by Darwin, 

77 f. 
Sherrington, C. S., 174 
Shinn, M. W., 27, 63, 142 
Shivering, 59 
Shouting, 90, 120, 135 
Shoving, 92 
Shuddering, 59 
Shyness, 94 f. 
SissoN, E. O., 289 
Situations, as components of orig- 



inal tendencies, 6 ff. ; need of 
exact description of, 20 ff. ; clas- 
sification -of original tendencies 
by, 206 f. For the situations in 
specific original tendencies, see 
under the name of the tendency. 

Skill, original foundations of, 47 ff., 
135 ff. 

Slavish instincts, 97 

Slaughter, J. W., 250 

Sleeplessness, in pity, 103 

Smiling, 81, 90, 91, 103, 120, 161 ff. 

Smith, S., 185, 187 ff., 192 

Smith, T. L., 96 

Sneering, 90 

Social instincts, 81 ff. 

Sociology, as a source of knowledge 
of original tendencies, 38 

Solitude, 63 1, 85 f. 

Sounds, imitation of, 113 ff. ; made 
in laughing, 163 f. See also 
Noises. 

Source of original tendencies, 230 ff. 

Sources of information concerning 
original tendencies, 27 ff. 

Specialization, of bonds, in fear, 66 
ff. ; in fighting, 68 ff. 

Spencer, H., 165 

Spitting, 78 

Stages of thought in the explana- 
tion of behavior, 11 ff. 

Stanley, H. M., 62 

Staring, 90, 92 

Starting, 59, 67, 81 

Stiffening, 68 

Stout, G. F., iio 

Strangeness, and fear, 60 ff., 65 f. 

Submission, 92 f. 

Suggestion, use of in schools, 289 
ff. 

Sully, J., 62, 168 f., 208 

Supernatural, fear of, 65 

Sutherland, A., 106, 241 ff. 

Sweating, 59 

Sympathetic induction of emotions 
AIcDougall's view of. 117 1. 

Sympathy, 102 ff. 



INDEX 



327 



Synapses, 216 ft'.; intimacy of, 221 

Tapping, 261 f. 

Tarde, G., 108 

Tastes, responses to, 50 

Teasing, 103 f., 275 f. 

Teeth, clenched in anger, tj 

Tennyson, quoted by Darwin, 76 

Theft, 277, 294 

Thomas, P. F., 289, 290 

Thomson, J. A., 231 

Thorndike, E. L., 134, 227, 263 

Thunder, 61 

Thwarting of original tendencies, 

Tickling, 166 ff. 

Tormenting, 103 f. 

Tracy, R, iio 

Tramps, and the migratory instinct, 

55 

Transmission of acquired traits, 231 
ff. 

Transitoriness, of original tenden- 
cies, 39 f., 228 f., 245 ff., 264 ff. 

Trembling, 59 

Trettien, a. W., 47 

Triplett, N., 100 

Tylor, E. B., quoted by Sutherland, 
106 

Universality, as a criterion of un- 
learnedness, 22, 23 

Unreadiness of conduction units to 
conduct, 126 ff. 

Use, law of, 171 f . ; of original ten- 
dencies, 270 ff. 



Utility theory of the order of orig- 
inal tendencies, 252 ff. ; evidence 
for, 258 f. 

Value of original tendencies, 270 ff. 

Van Gehuchten, A., 210, 214, 215, 
216, 218, 219, 223 

Variability of men in original ten- 
dencies, 197 

Varied reaction. See Multiple re- 
sponse. 

Veblen, T., 90, 143 

Veniaminof, quoted by Wester- 
ma rck, 84 

Visual exploration, 135 ff. 

Vocalization, 135 ff. 

Von Baer, quoted by Guillet, 240 

Walking, 47 

Wants, original foundations of, ^21 

ff. 
Washburn, M. F., 179 
Water, original responses to, 202 ff. 
Watson, J. B., 117, 229 
Westermarck, E., 83 
Whitman, C. O., 238 f. 
Wind, responses to, 63 
Woodworth, R. S., 47, 126, 151 
Workmanship, Veblen's instinct of, 

143 f. 
Writhing, 68, 74 
Wundt, W., 177, 234 f. 

Ziehen, Th., 128 



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